SPECIALIZED BODIES OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Abstract

The Council of Europe is a traditional intergovernmental organization. Its internal structure
includes the Parliamentary Assembly, which is a consultative body of the Organization in which
delegations from the member states' parliaments participate, and the Committee of Ministers,
which is the only executive and decision-making body of the entire Organization. This is explicitly
stated in the clause of Article 10 of the Statute of the Council of Europe, which lists only the
Consultative Assembly and the Committee of Ministers as the Organization's basic organs. The
Consultative Assembly, as its name suggests, has only advisory authority and, in a similar vein,
forms the Organization's so-called parliamentary pillar.
This is clearly stipulated in the provision of Article 10 of the Statute of the Council of
Europe, where only the Committee of Ministers (which constitutes the so-called intergovernmental
pillar of the Organization) and the Consultative Assembly are listed as the basic organs of the
Organization, which, as evident from its title, has only advisory competence and which
analogously forms the so-called parliamentary pillar of the Organization. This organizational
structure of the Council of Europe is completed by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities,
which not coincidentally has the status of the third pillar of the Organization, as well as a series
of special expert bodies, including the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
(ECRI) and the European Commission for Democracy through Law (known as the Venice
Commission). The latter also includes the offices of the political officials of the Council of Europe,
including the Secretary General of the Organization and the Commissioner for Human Rights.
Analogous to the latter, it is quite clear that the generally known European Court of Human Rights
– founded on the basis of the ECHR – is not an organ of the Council of Europe, as is the case with
all the other independent expert bodies established by a special decision of the Committee of
the Ministers, but only a judicial supervisory body for the needs of the ECHR itself, as is the case
with the supervisory bodies established on the basis of numerous international conventions of the
Council of Europe. Only the positions and functions of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
(ECRI), the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), the
Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, and the Consultative Council of European Judges. are discussed in the text that follows due to the space
constraints of this section of the paper.
In addition to the two fundamental organs already mentioned, the Council of Europe has
created a number of specialized expert and political bodies to expand its operations in several
particularly significant areas. The establishment of these bodies is directly related to the necessity
for the actualization of the aforementioned goals and jurisdiction.