By In our latest article in the series entitled ‘EU for Facebook Junkies’, Martina Brinkmann looks at the Council of Europe and gives us a quick breakdown of the organisation to help us understand what it is about.
Founded in 1949, the Council of Europe seeks to develop throughout Europe common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other reference texts on the protection of individuals. It is an international organisation and covers de facto now, the whole European Continent.
Don’t confuse it with The Council of the European Union.
The Council of Europe has a genuine pan-European dimension:
– 47 member countries.
– 1 applicant country: Belarus.
The EU has adopted the original European Flag which was created by the Council of Europe in 1955, as well as the European Anthem. No country has ever joined the EU without first belonging to the Council of Europe.
The best known body of the Council of Europe is the European Court of Human Rights, which enforces the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Council’s two statutory bodies are the Committee of Ministers, comprising of the foreign ministers of each member state and the Parliamentary Assembly which is composed of members of the national parliaments of each member state.
The headquarters of the Council of Europe are in Strasbourg, France.
English and French are its two official languages. The Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress also use German, Italian, Russian, and Turkish for some of their work.
You can find the Facebook page here.
They provide pictures, some videos and events regarding their work on this page.
The best feature is a Livestream App which you can install and then be able to watch their events live.
Overall, the page is a bit old-fashioned and could probably do with a bit more energy and the information section could be more detailed as well, but I really do like the Livestream feature which saves it in my opinion. Have a look at it for yourself.
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