Council of Europe. A breath of fresh air?

Estonia's Kristiina Ojuland could reinvigorate Europe's moral watchdog

RAGING against the Council of Europe recently, Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili, called its secretary-general, Walter Schwimmer, “an impudent and well-paid bureaucrat”. Mr Saakashvili wishes the Austrian had backed Georgia's reassertion of control over Ajaria, a rebel region, rather than urging restraint. Events have vindicated Mr Saakashvili; Ajaria remains peaceful. But his rebuke was off target; the problem with Mr Schwimmer - and the Council of Europe - is that they are not impudent enough.

If you were grading international institutions for having a dull-but-worthy image, on an index of one to ten, then the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe would rate a dozen points or so. Founded in 1949, it is older and bigger (with 45 countries) than the 25-member European Union, and much less muscular. But its goals are lofty: defending human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

There are, of course, other bodies - such as the EU and NATO - which aspire to promote democracy in Europe. But precisely because those bodies wield hard political power, they often compromise on their ideals: when you are doling out military aid or trade deals, you cannot always reward democratic behaviour, and punish the opposite, with perfect fairness. The Council of Europe has the potential, at least, to keep its moral authority intact.

Does it fulfil that potential? A lot of the time, it seems becalmed in a sea of polite conversation and political correctness - though attempts by the council's parliamentary assembly to investigate Russia's war in Chechnya are an honourable exception. It will have to move more boldly, if it is to have any hope of impressing the citizens of old and new Europe.

An opportunity will soon present itself. Next month the council chooses a new secretary-general, who will steer its priorities and serve as its public face for the next five years. All three candidates are very worthy. But by some oversight, only two of them are dull. The non-dull one is Kristiina Ojuland, 37, foreign minister of Estonia, and until 2002 leader of the liberal block in the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly. There are several good reasons why the assembly might want to vote her in.

Some of the council's best work lies in helping the stragglers among southern and eastern European states to keep alive their hopes of integrating with the West. Ms Ojuland is from a country that moved from post-Soviet chaos to market democracy; she can lead from the front.

The council is supposed to defend democratic values, but it has been so keen to embrace new members recently that it has let standards slip. Ms Ojuland is a tough-minded liberal who may just make the council a more effective watchdog. Last but not least, Ms Ojuland is not a middle-aged male from western Europe.

She will approach next month's vote as the underdog, trailing Mr Schwimmer, a conservative, and Terry Davis, a British socialist who lost narrowly to Mr Schwimmer in 1999. But they, for all their solid virtues, are unlikely to push hard for change. It may now be time for the council, for once in its worthy but consensus-cramped life, to live a little differently.

The article suggests that the Council of Europe is a worth but dull and ineffective organisation. It suggests that the new Secretary General to be appointed in June 2004 should be the Estonian candidate, Kristiina Ojuland.

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