Report of the Legal and aministrative Committee on Nationality Laws and a
European Passport
56. On 8th September the Assembly considered a report of the Legal and Administrative Committee on the progressive unification of the law of Member States with respect to the legal status of foreigners, with the ultimate object of creating a common European nationality and a European passport (an item on the Assembly's Agenda which had been referred direct to the Committee without prior general debate in the Assembly).
57. The following is a summary of the report, which was approved unanimously without debate :-
(1) The question of a common European nationality is referred for study by the Standing Committee of the Assembly or any other committee which the Standing Committee may suggest.
(2) The Assembly recommends to the Committee of Ministers that each Member State should ensure that the question of a European passport should be studied by its appropriate Department of State.
Report of the Legal and Administrative Committee on Refugees
58. On 8th September the Assembly considered a report by the Legal and Administrative Committee on the question of European Refugees, a subject which had been raised in connexion with the general question of European Human Rights.
59. The following is a summary of the Report as approved The Assembly instructs the Secretariat-
(i) to collect all necessary data on the question of European refugees and to this end to establish contacts with U.N.O. and the various Govern- ments and private institutions concerned;
(ii) to investigate the following questions: the juridical status of displaced persons, the re-employment in Europe or emigration of displaced persons, the disposal of "hard core "displaced persons, and whether any part of the field is not covered by the work of existing organisations.
Close of the Session
60. The Session of the Assembly was closed at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, 9th September, by a moving speech by the President, in which he reviewed the achievements of the Assembly, expressing the strong conviction that the Assembly had every reason to congratulate itself on its labours. He thought that the experiment had been worth while and that it was indeed possible to create a parliament of Europe. Referring to the presence of the Chairman of the Com- mittee of Ministers, he spoke of the close co-operation between the Committee of Ministers and the Assembly and the responsibility which the Assembly had shown in its debates and recommendations.
First Meeting of the Standing Committee and transmission of recommendations
to the Committee of Ministers
61. On 8th September the Assembly approved a proposal by the Bureau that the Standing Committee, set up in accordance with the proposals of the General Affairs Committee, should consist of the President, the. four vice- presidents and 23 other representatives. The United Kingdom representatives on this Committee are Lord Layton (as a Vice-President), Mr. Crawley, Mr. Lee, and Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe.
62. The Committee held its first meeting on 9th September and approved proposals made by the President for submitting the resolutions of the Assembly, and the future budgetary arrangements for the Assembly, to the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. The Committee also made it clear that it should co-ordinate and keep in close touch with the activities of the other committees and sub-committees set up by the Assembly, which should not meet without the Standing Committee's agreement. This control would, however, be administra- tive and would not cover the work of the Committees. The next meeting of the Committee iPageb65imofedely after the next meeting oPage Commi62 of
ISE
14
MPage 953 of 663 of the letter of 9th Septembeme Pesident to the
opy
Chairman of the Committee of Ministers transmitting the Assembly's recom- mendations and resolutions is attached at Appendix A.
Y.-General Points concerning the Work of the Assembly as Transmitted to the Committee of Ministers and Position under the Statute.
63. The reports of the various Committees, as approved by the Assembly, consist of preambles, resolutions for internal action by the Assembly, and recommendations to the Committee of Ministers for action, except in certain cases where a Committee has not found it necessary to report in more than one of these three ways, usually by resolution for internal action. In almost all cases where recommendations are made to the Committee of Ministers, the Assembly asks for a report on the action taken. The Committee of Ministers will presumably be called on to express an opinion and take action only on the recommendations made to it by the Assembly, and not on the preambles or resolutions for internal action in the Assembly, which are sent to it for information. Since, however, a number of the resolutions for internal action deal with the establishment of Committees to work between Sessions, the Committee of Ministers will be asked to make available any necessary extra funds over and above the existing budget (Article 38 (d) of the statute).
64. It may be relevant to recall that the Committee of Ministers can take action under the Statute in two ways:-
(a) Under Article 15 (a) of the Statute they may reach "conclusions " which are communicated as such to member Governments and require a two-thirds majority of the Committee. (b) Under Article 15 (b) of the Statute they may make " recommendations " to member Governments with the additional possibility of requesting each member Government to inform the Committee of the action taken.; such recommendations require a unanimous vote.
This distinction, while being largely a matter of form and laid down in order to secure agreement in the last stages of drafting the Statute, has some substance in that the recommendations
are a stronger form of action than
the "conclusions."
65. In dealing with the Assembly's recommendations the Committee of Ministers may therefore either—
(a) decide to take no action at all and report the fact to the Assembly (see
below), or
(b)
(c)
"reach conclusions" under Article 15 (a) of the Statute, or make "recommendations" under Article 15 (b) of the Statute, or (d) decide to take some alternative action to that proposed in the Assembly's recommendations, either on their own authority or after reference to the Assembly: this decision would require either a two-thirds majority or a unanimous vote according to whether the action falls under 15 (a) or Article 15 (b) of the Statute.
The Committee's proposals, or report on the action taken, will presumably be embodied in a report to the Assembly under Article 19 of the Statute. This report will have to be unanimous under Article 20 (a) (ii) of the Statute, but there is nothing to prevent the Committee deciding unanimously to report a divided opinion, undesirable as that would be. On the great majority of the recommenda- tions put forward, it is not of course necessary for the Committee of Ministers to reach final decisions at their meeting in November. In most cases a final decision is not required till a report has to be prepared for the Assembly either at an extraordinary session (if one is approved) or at the next ordinary session in a year's time.
66. The second general point is that the Assembly did not have time to give much thought to the form in which its various reports are presented, or to make much attempt to co-ordinate them. This is shown particularly in the different ways in which the Assembly suggest that action should be pursued. For instance some repBagerecommend that subjects should be studied and action gabenon a Govern- mental level by the Committee of Ministers, others intend the Committees of the
322
Assembly 654 of 662
15
continue their studies (in some cases concurrently with Governmental
Page 654 action) on a non-governmental level, while some instruct the Secretariat to make studies. This state of affairs will clearly improve when the Standing Committee set up by the Assembly to co-ordinate the work of the Assembly gets into its stride under the chairmanship of the President of the Assembly. It is a problem chiefly for the Assembly itself to tackle, but the Committee of Ministers may well be able to guide its decisions.
VI.-General Assessment
67. Given the vague conception of the Assembly's functions and the grave difficulties with which it was faced, the Assembly may be said in fact to have ful- filled many of the more modest hopes which could reasonably have been placed in it and to have avoided some of the likely pitfalls.
68. When the Council met, it had only the Statute to guide it on the relation- ship between its two organs. This document laid down that the Assembly should be a consultative body with fairly closely circumscribed powers.
This was inevitable, since it would have been, and still is, impossible to give it wide powers without deliberate decisions of the responsible Parliaments of the countries con- cerned, based on the views of their national electorates. At the same time the Statute was by design a flexible document susceptible of amendment in the light of developments. The individual representatives of the Assembly when arriving at Strasbourg may have had their own ideas how the Assembly would work within the stipulations of the Statute, but they only had the barest indications whether or not these views were shared by others. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the end of the Assembly still found this problem unsolved, although solid work had been done on it and plans laid for its further consideration in future, includ- ing recommendations from the Assembly for the amendment of the Statute to strengthen its own position.
69. The difficulties confronting the Council, and in particular the Consul- tative Assembly, were sufficient to make some people wonder whether it would function at all. The individual representatives, a certain number of international figures apart, did not know one another personally and had never worked together. There were two official languages, but seven of the twelve countries represented had neither of these as their mother tongue. There was no strictly party line of demarcation between the representatives, (though broad party divisions did mani- fest themselves from time to time), and there was a danger that national views would colour each representative's action. In addition the representatives only received their provisional rules of procedure just before the meeting; in the absence of a Leader of the House or a Government Front Bench, there was no authority to guide or organise their work; and they did not know who their President was to be. On the other hand the Council started with the great advant- age that all concerned wished it to succeed, even if their ideas how success should be achieved were very different. There was no purely negative element, like the presence of the Soviet Union in so many other international organisations.
70. In the relationship between the Committee of Ministers and the Assembly there had been widespread, but largely artificially inspired, fears that antagonism would arise from the start. This was belied in the event, and it can be said that the comparative moderation shown by the Assembly and the tact and flexibility shown by the Committee of Ministers in agreeing that the Assembly might discuss all the matters which it wished to place upon its agenda have paid a good dividend.
71. The Assembly itself began, even in this first session, to develop a co-operative parliamentary personality. National points of view in the main took second place to what may be described as a European point of view, in however many different forms that may have been expressed. This co-operative parliamen- tary personality, which should grow still further if the recommendation to abolish substitutes is approved, showed itself not only in the almost unanimous opinion of representatives that the Assembly's powers vis-à-vis the Committee of Ministers should be increased, but also in the development of the Assembly's own methodPage5df66and debate. At first there was Bandon4yo towards
16
sepspeeches: this rapidly developed, however, into a debating procedure of much closer cohesion, with argument centering round the particular point before the Assembly at any given moment. As was perhaps natural, the Assembly tended to carry out its work more on the lines of continental than English parliamentary practice. Nevertheless, certain important fundamental points have been taken from the British tradition such, for instance, as the fact that the representatives speak from their places and address the Chair. The Assembly in addition proved willing to learn from the British tradition in the matter of its privileges, and showed commendable independence in resisting any too blatant interference by the European Movement.
72. Little of this would have been possible had it not been for the excellence of M. Spaak as President of the Assembly. His personal qualifications, his knowledge of the English and French languages and of almost all existing inter- national organisations, as well as his own parliamentary position, made him the ideal, and indeed the only, candidate for this post. Some may have found that he was too dictatorial or that, instead of following a fixed procedure, he tended to improvise to meet the needs of the moment. But there is no doubt that without him the Assembly would have proceeded with its work in a very much less orderly fashion and with much greater delay, if indeed it had functioned at all.
73. If it is remembered that the recommendations are not the pronounce- ments of a parliament with power to see that its decisions are executed, and with the sense of responsibility which such power brings with it, nor even the work of a representative organisation, the results of the work of the Assembly must clearly command respect. When the Standing Committee established by the Assembly has got into its stride some of the present deficiencies may well be corrected. In the meantime the present session has shown that, although still very much in the formative stage, the Assembly is a live force which can even now focus public opinion and direct some useful criticism towards Governments and existing Governmental international organisations. It is therefore not without some reason that, in the Press conferences held by leading representatives at the close of the Session and by the Press of the majority of the countries represented, the Council was held to have made a successful start, in the face of many initial uncertainties and difficulties, in this experimental form of the conduct of international relations.
LETTER FROM PRESIDENT
OF
APPENDIX A
CONSULTATIVE ASSEMBLY ΤΟ CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS TRANSMITTING RECOMMENDATIONS AND RESOLU- TIONS OF THE ASSEMBLY
Your Excellency,
Council of Europe,
9th September, 1949
I have the honour to transmit to you herewith, to be laid before the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the texts of the Reports adopted by the Consultative Assembly during the course of the Session which closed on 8th September, 1949.
The Assembly referred the various items on its Agenda to six Committees :-
Committee on Rules of Procedure.
(2) Committee on General Affairs.
Committee on Economic Questions.
Committee on Cultural Questions.
Committee on Social Questions.
Committee on Legal and Administrative Questions.
Page 55th Committees has submitted one Bragof55e6ft2containing
recommendations to the Committee of Ministers.
17
323
an Page 1959 o
The Comitee of General Affairs has proposed, fembly has approved, the setting up of a Standing Committee of the Assembly for the co- ordination of the work of the Assembly and its Committees. The Committees have also drawn up their programmes of work to be done before the next Session.
I will comment briefly on the above-mentioned documents in this order.
The Chairman,
The Committee of Ministers of the
Council of Europe.
I. RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS
(a) Proposed amendments to the Statute. These proposals are to be found in Part III of Document 87.
With regard to Articles 4 and 5, the Consultative Assembly requests that it may be consulted on the admission of new Members and new associate Members to the Council of Europe.
A modification of Article 23 is suggested, whereby the Assembly would be empowered to fix its own Agenda independently of the Committee of Ministers.
It is also proposed that the system of Substitutes should be abolished and that the number of representatives should be doubled (Articles 25 and 26).
With regard to the Secretariat-General, there is a recommendation that two Deputy Secretaries-General be appointed, under the authority of the Secretary- General, one responsible for the Secretariat of the Committee of Ministers, and one for the Secretariat of the Consultative Assembly.
The modifications proposed call for certain changes in other Articles of the Statute, some of which are already mentioned in Part III, B, of Document 87. It will, in any case, be necessary to examine the Statute as a whole to see where other consequential modifications are necessary.
(b) The Assembly requests the Committee of Ministers to examine the question of the admission of new Members and of new Associate Members to the Council of Europe and to include this question in the Agenda of the next ordinary or extraordinary Session of the Assembly (Part III, C, of Document 87).
It seems clear from the Assembly's debates that this recommendation envisages more particularly the possibility of the admission of Western Germany, but it also affects the Sarre and Austria.
(c) Document 71 (Parts I and II) describes the economic questions which the Assembly requests the Committee of Ministers to examine.
The Assembly has particularly emphasised the necessity of impressing the gravity of the present situation upon the peoples of Europe by all possible information media.
These recommendations are directed towards the establishment of a system of multilateral payments, including the re-establishment of the convertibility of European currencies, the creation of a permanent body responsible for the co-ordination of credit policy, the development of the work started by the O.E.E.C. for the promotion of inter-European trade and for the study of economic relations between European and associated countries and territories, the preparation of a European Economic Union by maintaining and developing existing preferential systems, the study of the development of production in Member States with the object of satisfying mutual requirements as regards imports, the movement of persons, the investment of foreign capital, the extension of a system of guaranteed markets, the calling of an economic conference and of industrial conferences in which employers, workers and consumers would be represented with the object of organising the industries concerned and of increasing their productivity, and the preparation of a convention for the control of international cartels.
The Assembly hopes that the Committee of Ministers will agree to submit its proposals, based on these recommendations, to the next Session of the Assembly, in order that the Council of Europe, as soon as these proposals have been accepted. by the Assembly, may enter into negotiations with the Government of the United States and with any other interested Government (Part II, a: b:).
The Assembly also asks the Committee of Ministers to let the Standing Committee know, as soon as possible, through the intermediary of the President of the Assembly, of any objections that might in due course be made to the creation of a European Patents Office (Document 110).