A Brief History of the Council of Europe
The Europe that awoke in the days following the Liberation was
in a sorry state, torn apart by five years of war. States were
determined to build up their shattered economies, recover their
influence and, above all, ensure that such a tragedy could never
happen again. Winston Churchill was the first to point to the
solution, in his speech of 19 September 1946 in Zurich. According to
him, what was needed was "a remedy which, as if by miracle, would
transform the whole scene and in a few years make all Europe as free
and happy as Switzerland is today. We must build a kind of United
States of Europe".
Movements of various persuasions, but all dedicated to European unity,
were springing up everywhere at the time. All these organisations were
to combine to form the International Committee of the Movements for
European Unity. Its first act was to organise the Hague Congress, on 7
May 1948, remembered as "The Congress of Europe".
A thousand delegates at The Hague
More than a thousand delegates from some twenty countries, together
with a large number of observers, among them political and religious
figures, academics, writers and journalists, attended the Congress.
Its purpose was to demonstrate the breadth of the movements in favour
of European unification, and to determine the objectives which must be
met in order to achieve such a union.
A series of resolutions was adopted at the end of the Congress,
calling, amongst other things, for the creation of an economic and
political union to guarantee security, economic independence and
social progress, the establishment of a consultative assembly elected
by national parliaments, the drafting of a European charter of human
rights and the setting up of a court to enforce its decisions. All the
themes around which Europe was to be built were already sketched out
in this initial project. The Congress also revealed the divergences
which were soon to divide unconditional supporters of a European
federation (France and Belgium) from those who favoured simple inter-
governmental co-operation, such as Great Britain, Ireland and the
Scandinavian countries.
Compromise
On the international scene, the sharp East-West tensions marked by the
Prague coup and the Berlin blockade were to impart a sense of urgency
to the need to take action and devote serious thought to a genuine
inter-state association. Two months after the Congress of Europe,
Georges Bidault, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, issued an
invitation to his Brussels Treaty partners, the United Kingdom and the
Benelux countries, and to all those who wished to give substance to
The Hague proposals. Robert Schuman, who replaced him a few days
later, confirmed the invitation. France, supported by Belgium, in the
person of its Prime Minister Paul Henri Spaak, called for the creation
of a European Assembly, with wide-ranging powers, composed of members
of parliament from the various states and deciding by a majority vote.
This plan, assigning a fundamental role to the Assembly seemed quite
revolutionary in an international order hitherto the exclusive
preserve of governments. But Great Britain, which favoured a form of
intergovernmental co-operation in which the Assembly would have a
purely consultative function, rejected this approach.
It only softened its stance after lengthy negotiations. Finally, on 27
and 28 January 1949 the five ministers for foreign affairs of the
Brussels Treaty countries, meeting in the Belgian capital, reached a
