Conference of Specialised Ministers

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The organisation of a Conference of Specialised Ministers is a traditional working method of the Council of Europe.

Council of Europe international organization for defending human rights

The Council of Europe is an international organisation whose stated aim is to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 47 member states, covers approximately 820 million people and operates with an annual budget of approximately 500 million euros.

The purpose of such conferences is to define and pursue the goals of the Council of Europe’s intergovernmental activities in their particular fields of competence. These conferences have a quasi-legal identity of their own in international relations. The practice began in Vienna in 1959 with the first Conference of Ministers responsible for Family Affairs. However, the working methods for such conferences were only formalised in 1971 with the adoption of Committee of Ministers Resolution (71) 44., [1] which gives a list of conferences with which the Council of Europe "has a special working relationship".

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Vienna is the federal capital, largest city and one of nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primate city, with a population of about 1.9 million, and its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. Today it is the second largest German-speaking city after Berlin and just before Hamburg. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger.

In February 2008, in the interests of transparency and visibility, the Committee of Ministers decided that all of its ministerial conferences would henceforth include "Council of Europe" in the title. [2]

Several attempts to update this text finally came to fruition in June 2011 with the adoption of Resolution CM/Res(2011)7. [3]

Several of the Conferences are prepared by a special committee of senior officials, which meets solely for that purpose. Others are prepared by the respective Council of Europe steering committee. The Committee of Ministers issues a regular information document "Forthcoming Conferences of Specialised Ministers", which gives the current state of preparation of these conferences. [4]

The Conferences traditionally use a 3-letter abbreviation by which they and their relevant reports and resolutions are readily identified. Although a few of these have changed over the years, most of them have remained remarkably consistent.

The Committee of Ministers currently lists 14 conferences as operational:

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being in which disease and infirmity are absent.

The Council of Europe have been organising Conferences of Ministers of Justice (MJU) on a regular basis since 1961. They constitute an important forum of exchange and coordination of legal policy at the pan-European level. They are one of the best known of the Council of Europe's Conferences of Specialised Ministers.

The last of these, the Conference on Social Cohesion, is new, and met for the first time in Moscow in February 2009. [5] There have been a number of other conferences in the past, which are now discontinued. Many of the conferences have undergone several name changes, which make them difficult to trace. They should be distinguished from European Union ministerial conferences. The European Union occasionally convenes ministers in certain sectors (such as culture). [6] Such meetings are often described as informal. [7]

Some of the more successful conferences (e.g. Ministers of Justice) have become virtual institutions in themselves. The Committee of Ministers approves the theme and the organisations and non-member states to be invited.

Each conference makes a report to the Committee of Ministers after the conference, which also examines the possible follow-up to the conference. Several conferences of specialised ministers have only been held once, with no plans for them to meet again, notably :

Four other ministerial conferences have been discontinued :

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Assembly of the Western European Union organization

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References

  1. ↑ "Resolution (71) 44 on Conferences of Specialised Ministers". Council of Europe. 1971-12-16. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
  2. ↑ "Volume of decisions – 1.4". Council of Europe. 2008-02-20. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
  3. ↑ "Decision of the Ministers' Deputies". Council of Europe. 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
  4. ↑ "CM/Inf(2005)50 Forthcoming Conferences of Specialised Ministers". Council of Europe. 2008-07-23. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
  5. ↑ "881bis". Council of Europe. 2008-05-15. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
  6. ↑ Atanassova, Albena (2008-07-24). "European Culture Ministers Set Meet in Paris". Standart. Archived from the original on 2012-02-13.
  7. ↑ "Ministers disagree on European criminal record". euractiv.com. 2005-01-31. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
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