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Opinion 268 (2008)
Budgets of the Council of Europe for the financial year 2009
1. For four years now, in its various
budgetary opinions, the Parliamentary Assembly has been constantly seeking
to draw member states’ attention to the worsening financial situation
of the Council of Europe. It regrets that its repeated calls for
an awareness of this deterioration have so far come to nothing.
2. In 2009 the Council of Europe will celebrate its 60th anniversary,
and the Assembly is concerned to see the image of the Organisation,
Europe’s democratic conscience and human rights guardian, wilting
like a flower without water.
3. The Assembly is aware of the budgetary difficulties that
certain member states may be encountering, but refuses to consider
this a reason to further weaken the Council of Europe by starving
it of resources through the maintenance of a policy based solely
on the principle of zero real growth in the Organisation’s budget.
4. In particular, the Assembly deems it regrettable that the
zero budgetary growth principle is also applied to the partial agreements
and would like them not to be subject to this rule in view of the
success and the specific nature of their activities and, in some
instances, their sources of funds.
5. It must be said that the financial burden is very unequally
shared among the member states. For this reason, in its Opinion No. 264 (2007) on the budgets of the Council of Europe for the financial
year 2008 and its Recommendation
1812 (2007) on the political dimension of the Council of Europe
budget, the Assembly proposed to the Committee of Ministers a number
of ways of adapting the budget of the Organisation to the current
challenges and reviewing financing conditions and apportionment
of the financial expense among the member states. It notes that
it has unfortunately not yet received a reply to this recommendation.
6. The Assembly considers that efficient budget management must
go hand in hand with a vision for the Organisation in the medium
to long term. It accordingly calls on the Committee of Ministers
to adopt, without delay, a multi-annual budget framework. In this
connection, the Assembly invites the Committee of Ministers to refer
to its Opinion No. 256
(2005) on the budgets of the Council of Europe for the financial
year 2006, in which it set out the benefits which argue in favour
of such a measure.
7. A multi-annual budget framework will indeed make it possible
to assess the financial implications of earlier decisions made by
the Committee of Ministers and thereby to be perfectly aware of
the Council of Europe’s expenditure needs in the short and medium
term. The Assembly notes that a plan of this kind exists for investments
(the 2007-11 Investment Plan) and thinks it would be feasible to
apply a multi-annual approach to the Organisation’s operating and
activities budgets.
8. The fact is that the Council of Europe budget increases automatically
each year by several million euros on account of the full-year effect
of earlier decisions made by the Committee of Ministers, in particular concerning
the additional resources allocated to the European Court of Human
Rights, compulsory adjustments to the salary scales of the Organisation’s
staff and other expenditure on buildings maintenance and modernisation.
9. In view of these requirements, the Assembly would like the
Committee of Ministers to modify Article 70 of the Financial Regulations
in order to leave any credit balance on closing the accounts for
a financial year systematically at the Organisation’s disposal,
so that it can either be transferred to a reserve account or used to
finance non-recurring expenditure in subsequent years.
10. For four years now, it has been clear from trends in the ordinary
budget of the Council of Europe that the European Court of Human
Rights’ share of the budget is growing while, in parallel, the share
of other sectors of the Organisation is decreasing, apart from expenditure
on administrative and logistical support functions, linked in part
to the growth in the Court’s resources. It can be seen that the
Court’s budget has grown from 21.9% of the ordinary budget in 2005
to 25.3% in 2008.
11. Given the importance of the European Court of Human Rights
to the Council of Europe and its member states, and in view of the
financial efforts made in recent years by these states and the Organisation’s
various departments to enable the Court to fulfil its statutory
obligations, the Assembly considers that the time has come to draw
up a progress report on the Court, so as to take stock of what has
been achieved with the additional resources it has received.
12. The Assembly, which is responsible for electing the judges
representing each High Contracting Party to the European Convention
on Human Rights (ETS No. 5) and for issuing an opinion on the budget
of the Council of Europe as a whole, underlines the essential need
to ensure the efficacy and the proper functioning of the Court in
the medium to long term.
13. To this end, the Assembly would like a study of the Court’s
functioning to be scheduled in 2009 so as to assess, inter alia,
the implementation of the recommendations made by Lord Woolf, former
Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, who, at the request of
the Secretary General and the President of the Court, conducted
a review to consider what administrative measures could be taken,
before the entry into force of Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention
on Human Rights (CETS No. 194), to help the Court cope with its caseload.
14. This study could concern in particular the Court’s working
methods and future staffing needs. The Assembly is convinced that
a study of this kind would be beneficial should the European Union
accede to the European Convention on Human Rights if the Treaty
of Lisbon is ratified by the 27 European Union member states. The
Council of Europe would thereby have a clearer idea of the additional
resources the Court may need in coming years.
15. The Assembly would like the conclusions of this stocktaking
exercise to be presented not only to the Committee of Ministers
but also to itself. It is moreover convinced that, whatever the
outcome, the member states will be unable to maintain the zero real
growth policy and will be obliged to increase their contributions to
the Council of Europe’s budgets substantially.
16. The Assembly also urges the authorities of the Russian Federation
to do everything in their power to enable the rapid ratification
of Protocol No. 14, so as to permit the immediate implementation
of certain measures proposed by the Group of Wise Persons appointed
to consider the long-term effectiveness of the control mechanism
of the European Convention on Human Rights. The entry into force
of Protocol No. 14 is indeed an absolute priority if the aim is
to give the Court the means to fulfil its statutory obligations
more effectively.
17. The Assembly continues to regard the European Court of Human
Rights as the Council of Europe’s finest achievement, while being
of the opinion that the Organisation’s work should not be confined
solely to the major pillars constituted by human rights, the rule
of law and democracy, but should also cover other fields in which
the Council of Europe is often a European leader and at which it
excels, namely education, culture, youth, sport, social cohesion
and public health, also matters of concern for the member states.
18. The Assembly remains convinced that the Council of Europe,
with its wealth of standard-setting and other achievements, acknowledged
by the member states and worldwide, has the full potential to offer
these states ambitious, well targeted, innovative work programmes
in line with the Warsaw Action Plan and that the human and financial
resources needed to implement such programmes exist.
19. An analysis of voluntary contributions paid to the Council
of Europe by member states, non-member states and other institutional
partners, such as the European Commission, indeed shows that between
2005 and 2007 nearly €59 million in additional resources were granted
to the Organisation to support its various activity programmes.
20. However, although this confidence in the Organisation can
but be welcomed by the Assembly, it would like to temper its satisfaction
with the fact that it deems it illogical to propose that activities
should be financed à la carte instead of fully concentrating resources
on work programmes approved by all the member states’ delegations.
The Assembly wishes voluntary contributions to be paid into a fund
earmarked for financing activities as defined by the operational
directorates and approved by the Committee of Ministers, but bearing in
mind the donors’ wishes.
21. The Assembly reiterates that the staff of the Council of
Europe is undoubtedly one of its most precious assets, whose work
to a large extent leads to the production of documents of a lasting
and/or binding nature, destined to constitute authoritative standards
or precedents long after the financial year in which the expenditure
was incurred for their drafting. The Assembly accordingly reaffirms
its concern that the staff of the Council of Europe not be considered
a mere accounting variable that can be adjusted to balance the Council of
Europe’s finances.
22. For this reason, the Assembly calls on the member states
to fully assume the consequences of their decisions and to honour
their financial commitments, particularly as regards the pension
reserve fund, so as to guarantee the sustainability of the pension
scheme for Council of Europe staff members, who are and remain citizens
of the member states.
23. The new actuarial report for this reserve fund does in fact
require that the total contribution to be paid by member states
in 2009 be increased by €5.9 million. Therefore, the Assembly insists
that member states finance the full amount of this increase by increasing
their own contribution to the pensions budget and not by reducing
their appropriations for the other budgets of the Organisation (in
particular the ordinary budget).
24. The Assembly also reaffirms its attachment to the Council
of Europe’s continued membership of the existing co-ordinated system,
as already set out in its Opinion
No. 259 (2006) on the budgets of the Council of Europe for the financial
year 2007.
25. In addition, the Assembly reminds the Committee of Ministers
of the desire it expressed in its Opinion No. 264 (2007) for the founding of a genuine “European centre of excellence
for democracy and human rights” in Strasbourg around the Council
of Europe and its legal and political bodies.
26. The Assembly is the only European parliamentary institution
that allows the national parliaments of the 47 member states of
the Council of Europe to debate and work together with a view to
finding answers to the challenges confronting Europe today. It accordingly
regrets the Committee of Ministers’ refusal to involve it more in
the decision-making mechanism concerning the Council of Europe’s
priorities and budgets, as it had suggested in its Recommendation 1728 (2005). It finds this attitude all the more incomprehensible
in a context where many member states have shown their determination
to reinforce the role played by their national parliaments in their
countries’ political systems and a number of international parliamentary
institutions have been given broader remits.