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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
The universal and regional international organizations that are part of the twentieth century political scene confront one basic question: how to move successfully from international recommendation to national action. Mechanisms that offer at least a partial answer to this problem are of interest; and one such approach is the official pressure group of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, its Permanent Working Party on Parliamentary and Public Relations.
1 The membership of the Council has grown to seventeen: the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Cyprus, Iceland, Turkey, Greece, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Switzerland. The first ten named were the original members.
2 Thus, the Fourth Annual Report of the Working Party, Document 1193, September 19, 1960, p. 3, noted that “during the past year the Assembly has passed several resolutions exhorting its members to speak on specific questions in their national parliaments. According to information received, these resolutions have borne little fruit.”
3 Fifth Annual Report of the Wording Party, Document 1306, July 1, 1961, p. 5. Several parliaments have set up permanent secretariats for international organizational affairs.
4 Fourth Annual Report of the Wording Party, Document 1193, September 19, 1960, p. 6. The selection of a spokesman for each party would create a direct link between the Assembly and each national political group, thus widening the circulation of Assembly texts, and would provide a reasonable guarantee that at least one national delegation speaker would be politically in a position to promote a given Assembly text. (First Annual Report of the Wording Party, Document 715, October 11, 1957, p. 5.)
5 Sixth Annual Report of the Working Party, Document 1446, July 1, 1962, p. 7. The number of meetings held annually since this organ's inception is 6, 4, 6, 8, 6, 7, 7.
6 The secretary enters the picture early in the evolution of an Assembly proposal when an Assembly member enlists the aid of a secretary in preparing the first draft of a resolution the member would like to bring to the Assembly. The parliamentarian may make some changes in die draft; then he proceeds to obtain the ten signatures needed for the introduction of a proposal. After die measure has been tabled it is referred to an appropriate committee, which eventually appoints a rapporteur to draft its report, and the rapporteur turns to the Secretariat for aid. The final form, as a rule, bears a marked resemblance to the initial text.
7 First Annual Report of the Working Party, Document 640, Appendix 4, April 1957. This was supplemented several years later by a summary of the possibilities offered by the procedures of the various national parliaments for efforts to obtain support for Assembly texts. (Fourth Annual Report of the Working Party, Document 1193, September 19, 1960, p. 12 ff.)
