Thread by @PACE_News

1/ Happy birthday to the European Convention on Human Rights, signed #OnThisDay 70 years ago! Today, the #ECHR binds 47 nations, obliging them to respect the basic rights of everyone they deal with. In this #thread, we look at the Assembly’s key role in its drafting. #ECHR70

2/ When the @CoE met for the first time in the summer of 1949, there was a widespread expectation that one of its most urgent tasks was to draft a “charter of individual rights”, to cement democracy in Europe and avoid a repeat of the horrors of Nazi rule.

3/ This had been a key demand of the Hague Congress a year earlier, along with the creation of the @CoE itself. Its honorary President Winston Churchill told delegates: “in the centre of our movement stands a charter of human rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law.”

4/ A number of lawyers associated with the European Movement began drafting just such a charter, with the declared aim of creating “a system of collective security against tyranny”. They arrived in Strasbourg in August 1949 with a blueprint ready to propose.

5/ Two of them were to become key figures behind the Assembly’s push for the Convention – French lawyer, former minister and Resistance fighter Pierre-Henri Teitgen, and Scottish barrister and Conservative MP Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe.

6/ The two had first met at the Nuremberg Tribunal, where Maxwell-Fyfe had been Deputy Chief Prosecutor, and they had worked together at the Hague. Both thus had first-hand experience of the potential of international justice.

7/ Within days of the opening of the Assembly’s first session, together with 45 other members (list below), they had put forward their draft in an historic motion, declaring boldly that a convention “can and must be concluded immediately”. Read it here:
pace.coe.int/en/files/3/html

8/ The first task was to persuade the full Assembly of their vision. Opening the debate on “a collective guarantee of human rights and fundamental freedoms” on 19th August 1949, Teitgen set out, patiently yet persuasively, why a Convention was needed and how it might operate.

9/ You can read his full speech – as well as the others made in that historic first debate – here, published in full online for the first time (Teitgen begins speaking on p. 404 in English, p. 405 in French - as the languages alternate by page):
rm.coe.int/first-session-…

10/ The proposal was warmly received. Speaker after speaker – from Denmark, Greece, Italy, Sweden, UK, Belgium, Ireland, Turkey and the Netherlands – rose to support a human rights convention, and their hopes for what it might contain. Read their speeches from p. 410/1.

11/ The Assembly swiftly referred the question to its 24-member Committee on Legal and Administrative Questions, chaired by Maxwell-Fyfe, which got to work. Over 14 meetings and some 40 hours of debate, it debated every aspect of the new convention...

12/ The committee's final report, with Teitgen as rapporteur, went straight to the heart of the matter with two key questions: which rights should be included in a future #ECHR, and what mechanism should be developed to guarantee them? Read it here... pace.coe.int/en/files/36/ht…

13/ On the first, the committee felt only the most serious rights violations should be included: “‘Professional’ freedoms and ‘social’ rights [...] must also, in the future, be defined and protected; but everyone will understand that it is necessary to begin at the beginning.”

14/ The committee was also clear that the new Convention should base itself, as far as possible, on the rights already set out in the Universal Declaration, which had been agreed at the United Nations a few months earlier.

15/ On the second question, the committee felt that merely “petitioning” governments with grievances would be completely insufficient. There needed to be judicial muscle to give real effect to these guarantees – a full-fledged court, backed by a commission to filter cases.

16/ Teitgen presented his report to the Assembly in a second speech to the Assembly on 7 September, outlining the debates in committee and making the case for its final conclusions. Read it here (begins p. 1142 in English, p. 1143 in French). rm.coe.int/first-session-…

17/ On the very last day of the month-long 1949 session, the Assembly voted for Teitgen’s report by 64 votes to 1, with 21 abstentions. The Assembly had given its backing to the European Movement draft, with only relatively small changes.

18/ The recommendation adopted that day called on the twelve @CoE governments to “cause a draft Convention to be drawn up as early as possible, providing a collective guarantee”, and listing the 10 rights to be included (below). Read it here...
pace.coe.int/en/files/14035…

19/ The bare bones of the Convention system as we know it emerged in these fascinating debates – the general scope of the rights to be guaranteed, a court to enforce them, the requirement to “exhaust all means of national redress”, application at national level, and more.

20/ The idea that the Council of Europe should insist on ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights as a condition of membership also emerged from the Assembly at this time – a far-sighted step which was to have a huge impact in the years ahead.

21/ Amid high hopes, the Assembly’s recommendation was transmitted to the @CoE’s governmental body, the Committee of Ministers, which agreed to set up a group of legal experts to draft the Convention. pace.coe.int/en/files/59/ht…

22/ This, it seems, wasn’t sufficient for the Assembly’s ebullient President, Paul-Henri Spaak, who swiftly wrote to the ministers regretting there had been no approval in principle for the Assembly’s draft, and worrying that it could be “pigeon-holed”...
pace.coe.int/en/files/60/ht…

23/ But the process at ministerial level was under way. There were many battles to come over the winter and spring - and the draft finally approved by the @CoE's Committee of Ministers fell short of the Assembly's draft in key respects.

24/ Most crucially, in a compromise between governments, the right of individual petition was made optional - a weak point in the Convention which took many years to put right.

25/ The ministers also agreed to allow derogations in emergencies, and removed the reference to regular free elections - much to the disappointment of Teitgen, Maxwell-Fyfe and other members of the Assembly.

26/ Maxwell-Fyfe returned to the fray with a report to the Assembly in August 1950, welcoming the ministers' draft, but pressing for a Preamble to the convention, as well as reinstatement of a right to free elections, which had been dropped. Read it here: pace.coe.int/en/files/146/h…

27/ Just fifteen months after the Assembly’s recommendation, on 4 November 1950, the Convention was signed at the Barberini Palace in Rome. Read the original text signed that day…
echr.coe.int/Documents/Coll…

28/ The Assembly played a key role in initiating and shaping the convention - and, over the years, many of the aspects it had pressed for in its original recommendation came to pass, one way or another.

29/ Today, the Assembly continues to champion the convention in many ways, proposing new rights and using its parliamentary network to press governments to respect rulings of the Court. 70 years on, with fresh challenges, PACE still has a key role to play. Happy birthday #ECHR!