A Need for a Change

Prof. Adam Daniel Rotfeld, minister of foreign affairs, talks to Andrzej Jonas and Witold Żygulski.

What are the principles and values of the Council of Europe today?

Democracy, human rights, the rule of law—on these principles many international organizations are based today, including the Council of Europe. These values have been the council's foundation. In today's world, respect for the rules of democracy is of key importance for international security. Earlier, when we talked about security, we had military issues in mind—the army's power and equipment. That is still an important element, but there are other determinants of security. When we talk about hard security, we have mainly military aspects in mind. Soft security primarily involves seeking answers to questions concerning good governance of the state and whether the rule of law and the rights of individuals and various minorities are respected.

There is a close relationship between the elements that prevent the outbreak of conflicts—socioeconomic developments and democracy, on the one hand, and human rights and good governance of the state, on the other. These elements today determine the security of states and relations between them. For the first time in nearly 300 years, no country in Europe is threatened by any of its immediate neighbors in terms of an unexpected attack. This is something unique.

So what is the role of the Council of Europe?

The Council of Europe was created 55 years ago as an organization designed to contradict everything that led to the biggest crime in the history of Europe—World War II. This was the reaction of democratic states to genocide and hatred spread by Nazi Germany. The goal was to create something that would prevent the repetition of such social cataclysms as fascism and unlawful systems at any time in the future. On a global scale, the United Nations was founded with that goal in mind, while the Council of Europe was designed to operate on a local scale.

In the late 1960s, two human rights conventions (on political rights and socioeconomic and cultural rights) were passed. They were a milestone in the transfer of political-ethical-moral principles included in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights into binding laws.

The paradox was that although we had organizations, these laws were not respected. The world was divided into a bipolar system. In the East Bloc countries, there was a visible detachment of words from reality. In declarations, these countries would often support high standards. For example, the Stalinist constitution of the Soviet Union, adopted in 1936, was very democratic in terms of the language it used. In practice, the 1930s were the period of the worst crimes and violations of the law in the Soviet Union, a time of unlawfulness in that country. This situation, with varying intensity, lasted until the end of socialist realism. Words had a completely different status than in normal states. The 1980s transformation meant a return to normalcy. People's expectations were rightly expressed by the great Polish poet Julian Tuwim: "Let law always mean law, and justice—justice."

From this point of view, it is difficult to overestimate the role of the Council of Europe. All the countries that entered the path of democratic development wanted to join the council as soon as possible. The societies of democratic states faced a dilemma: should the Council of Europe accept new states that declare adherence to these standards, although there were and still are doubts whether they really do so? There were opponents of the council's enlargement. They believed that you should not accept states "in advance." The enlargement's supporters thought new countries should be admitted and then encouraged to gradually implement European standards. The second idea won. As a result, today the council includes some states that still do not fully observe certain standards. However, there is a reference point. All the states have to explain their policies to the Council of Europe.

Recently there has been much talk about the need to reform the council. Will this summit initiate such a process?

I would not formulate that in such a way. No great breakthroughs should be expected from conferences or summits. The period when summits were events that were described as "historical" and "breakthrough" is over. Currently, there are many summits by various international organizations every year. It is only May, and I have already taken part in two this year and there will be more. So a certain inflation, and, consequently, a depreciation in the value of summits has occurred. It should not be expected that each meeting at a summit will be linked with breakthrough changes. Breakthroughs are the results of long processes. Top-level meetings are sometimes a symbolic end to a certain stage.

The final documents related to the Third Summit of the Council of Europe have been negotiated for a year. Recently, talks were held in Strasbourg between the council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). As the chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, I met with the president of the European Court of Human Rights and with the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe René van der Linden. I presented a report on the nearly six-month Polish presidency to the Parliamentary Assembly. In talks on the cooperation with the OSCE, the Slovenian minister of foreign affairs was my partner (Slovenia is holding the rotating presidency of the OSCE, just like Poland is temporarily presiding over the Council of Europe). In Strasbourg, I expressed an opinion that a declaration on cooperation between our organizations—adoption of which will be one of the key elements of the Warsaw summit—should not be narrowed to a set of abstract slogans: people can no longer accept this.

We should consider where and on what concrete issues the council and the OSCE have to act jointly, where they should coordinate and harmonize the work, and where their activities overlap or even hamper each other's actions. In bodies such as the Council of Europe or the OSCE, a certain kind of bureaucratic patriotism appears. As a result, sometimes diplomats represent to a much larger extent the interests of the organizations than the states from which they come and which they represent in international institutions. This phenomenon sometimes leads to absurdity. Over 10 years ago, at the second OSCE summit in Helsinki in 1992, and a statement was formulated that international organizations operating in the same area should seek interlocking roles and not block each other's activities.

Why is this difficult?

In many organizations, a very strong bureaucratic machine is a burden. Overcoming this should be one of the tasks of the Warsaw summit. Organizations should serve the countries, and states cannot be treated mainly as a source of financing, that is, cashiers that have to cover the growing expenses of organizations, while losing control over their actions. Interests of states are lost somewhere in the process. This is a supra-regional, universal problem that also applies to the UN. Hence the emergence of a need for UN reform and of the concepts recently presented by its Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In the OSCE, a group of seven experts has been established who will prepare a document and recommend necessary changes and suggestions for the organization's new tasks. On Feb. 12 German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder proposed such a discussion in NATO. This kind of debate has continued for quite some time in the EU; the most advanced outcome of that is the Constitution Treaty, which is nothing but an attempt to redefine the EU after the largest enlargement in its history.

Are similar reforms being prepared in the Council of Europe?

Well, for many reasons, the Council of Europe has been resistant to changes. First, it has operated for a long time, has great merits and its goals were well formulated years ago. Because of that—and this is the second reason—many Strasbourg officials have started to feel like priests of the holy fire whom the states should trust. As often happens with priests, they often lose sight of the real issues that concern their flock. The conclusion is: If the council does not realize that a change is necessary, it will be marginalized.

The Council of Europe and the OSCE are comparable organizations. The OSCE is weak, the council is strong; the former is young, the latter is old; the OSCE is cheap, the council is expensive; the former has a skeleton crew, the latter employs an significant number of people. If an awareness of the need for change has matured in the OSCE, it must also mature in the council. But the paradox is that it is easier to change weak organizations with a small number of officials than strong ones with an army of personnel who defend their vested interests.

Will the issues you are talking about be reflected by the summit in Warsaw?

I think so, at least partly. I hope that a declaration on cooperation between the OSCE and the Council of Europe will be signed. Also, a few other documents will be adopted, for example conventions on the prevention of terrorism, on fighting human trafficking, money laundering and financing of terrorism. It is my intention as the chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to avoid big and empty words in all the documents we adopt. They often cloud the real picture. Today, the issue is not about working out some new concepts or models, but about finding a simple response to the questions of how to face new threats, how to solve new problems that we did not encounter in the past. These include the issues of terrorism, organized crime, arms and drug trafficking, money laundering and big-scale corruption. In other words—the main problems plaguing today's European societies.

The arms trade is in general a normal area of economic exchange; it becomes a negative phenomenon when it is illegal and not subject to any controls. This is not only about weapons of mass destruction. In practice, today's trade in, for example, small arms is beyond control, because its transports are difficult to monitor. So no one knows, for example, how many AK-47 assault rifles there are in the world today. In most local conflicts, particularly in the developing countries, such simple, primitive but reliable arms are used. Landmines are another type of weapon that are not controlled; their number worldwide is estimated at over 100 million. This is a very cheap weapon to produce, but detecting and destroying them are much more expensive.

What will be the Polish flavor of the summit?

Warsaw summit will not be devoted to Poland's particular interests. Such a goal would demonstrate a narrow-minded approach. As the host, Poland can and should, like any normal European state, strive to increase the efficiency of the Council of Europe. Preparations for the summit in Warsaw are a demonstration of our mature, European attitude to democracy, development, security and respect for human rights. The meeting in Warsaw will make us aware that we are a member of a single big European family, in which a common political philosophy should develop according to which partners have experiences and opinions that cannot be ignored.

We would like the document of the Warsaw summit to reflect the fact that the universal values promoted by the Council of Europe became a reality in a large part of Europe owing to the Solidarity movement that started in Poland 25 years ago. This was the beginning of a series of events and democratic changes that eventually brought the Berlin Wall down. In a significant part of Europe it is believed that the wall's downfall was the beginning. But in fact, without Solidarity there would be no changes in this part of Europe. The collapse of the Berlin Wall marked the end of an important stage.

This was Poland's most important contribution to the promotion of universal European values. The peaceful transformation started in Poland 25 years ago. Later, it was and still is continued by different generations in various Eastern and Southern European countries. These changes have different grounds and different names—"velvet," "rose," "orange"—but what links them is avoidance of the use of force, and installment of democratic governments based on the principles of law and respect for human rights.