What Council of Europe is and how it works

What a member signs

Ten states signed the statute at St James's Palace in London on 5 May 1949: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It entered into force on 3 August 1949, and Greece and Turkiye were admitted on 9 August 1949, before the founding year was out. The Federal Republic of Germany accepted the statute as an associate member on 13 July 1950 and became a full member on 2 May 1951; the Saar deposited an instrument the same day in 1950 and fell out of the arrangement when it joined the Federal Republic.

Article 3 sets the condition of entry: a member accepts the rule of law and the enjoyment by everyone within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Article 4 leaves the invitation with the Committee of Ministers, which makes admission a decision taken by the members rather than a threshold a candidate crosses on its own. Article 7 provides for withdrawal by notice and Article 8 for suspension and for a request to withdraw. Both articles have been used.

The Convention, and the court that reads it

The European Convention on Human Rights was opened for signature at Rome on 4 November 1950 and entered into force on 3 September 1953. From then until 1998 an application was sifted by a Commission and heard, if it got that far, by a court sitting part time. Protocol No. 11 abolished the Commission and made the Court permanent from 1 November 1998, and an application now reaches Strasbourg directly once the domestic remedies are used up. There is one judge for each state bound by the Convention. A judgment binds the state it is given against, and Article 46 puts the supervision of its execution with the Committee of Ministers, which is the part of the machinery with no counterpart in an ordinary treaty.

States can also bring cases against one another, and that route is older than the individual one is busy.

What happened to Greece, and to Russia

Army officers took power in Greece in April 1967. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands lodged a complaint against the new government under the Convention, and in January 1968 the Parliamentary Assembly resolved that continued membership required a return to a democratic and parliamentary regime respectful of human rights. On 12 December 1969, with the Assembly recommending the measures of Article 8, Greece gave notice of withdrawal; the notice took effect on 31 December 1970. Greece was invited back and returned on 28 November 1974.

Russia joined on 28 February 1996 and ceased to be a member on 16 March 2022, under Resolution CM/Res(2022)2 of the Committee of Ministers taken in the Article 8 procedure opened after the attack on Ukraine of 24 February 2022. It remained a party to the Convention until 16 September 2022, and the Court kept its competence over acts and omissions up to that date. At the fourth summit of heads of state and government, held at Reykjavik on 16 and 17 May 2023, the participants established the Register of Damage Caused by the Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, an enlarged partial agreement that states outside the membership may join.

Abolition as a condition

Protocol No. 6, opened at Strasbourg on 28 April 1983, abolishes the death penalty in peacetime. Protocol No. 13, opened at Vilnius on 3 May 2002 and in force from 1 July 2003, abolishes it in every circumstance, war included. Ratification of the first became a standing expectation of accession through the enlargement of the 1990s, and the second now runs across almost the whole membership: Armenia's ratification took effect on 1 February 2024, and by 2026 the one signature not yet followed by a ratification was Azerbaijan's, given on 8 March 2023.

Not the European Union

The two organisations are separate, and in one respect the resemblance is not a coincidence. The circle of twelve gold stars on a blue ground was picked from the entries to a public competition and adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 9 December 1955; the European Communities took the same emblem in 1985, and the Council of Europe changed its own logo in 1999 to keep the two apart. Neither the European Council nor the Council of the European Union is a body of this organisation, despite the names.

The membership is the plainer difference. Every state in the European Union is a member here, and the reverse does not hold: the United Kingdom left the Union on 31 January 2020 and stayed, and so did Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Turkiye, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino, none of which has ever been in the Union.

Instruments that reach past the membership

A number of the organisation's conventions are open to states that are not members of it. Convention 108, opened at Strasbourg on 28 January 1981, was the first binding international instrument on the automatic processing of personal data. The Convention on Cybercrime, opened at Budapest on 23 November 2001 and in force from 1 July 2004, counted 75 parties in June 2024, and much of that accession came from outside Europe. The Venice Commission, set up by Committee of Ministers Resolution (90)6 of 10 May 1990 to advise on constitutional law, is an enlarged agreement that takes in fifteen states from beyond the membership. Five states hold observer status with the Committee of Ministers: the Holy See from 1970, Canada, Japan and the United States from 1996, and Mexico from 1999.

Who is outside

Belarus applied in 1993, and the special guest status held by its parliament was suspended in January 1997 after a referendum the previous November that election observers declined to accept. Its criminal code still provides for the death penalty.

Kosovo applied on 12 May 2022. The Committee of Ministers sent the request to the Parliamentary Assembly on 24 April 2023, and the Assembly recommended an invitation on 16 April 2024 by 131 votes to 29 with 11 abstentions, asking that any membership be without prejudice to the positions of member states on statehood. Under Article 4 the invitation is the Committee of Ministers' to issue. Several members do not recognise Kosovo as a state. The catalogue records the application, the vote and the disagreement, and settles none of them.