CoE (Council of Europe)

The Council of Europe (CoE) was founded on 5 May 1949 by the Treaty of London, signed initially by ten Western European states. It is distinct from the European Union and from the European Council (an EU institution); the CoE has its own legal personality, membership, and treaty system. Its headquarters is the Palais de l'Europe in Strasbourg, France.

The organisation's flagship instrument is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), opened for signature in Rome in 1950 and entered into force in 1953. The Convention is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), whose judgments are binding on states parties. Individuals may petition the Court directly after exhausting domestic remedies.

Key organs include:

• the Committee of Ministers, the decision-making body composed of member states' foreign ministers;
• the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), made up of delegations from national parliaments;
• the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities;
• the Secretary General, elected by PACE;
• the Commissioner for Human Rights, an independent monitoring office.

Beyond the ECHR, the CoE has produced more than 200 treaties, including the European Social Charter, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention, 2001), the Istanbul Convention on violence against women (2011), and the Lanzarote Convention on child protection. Specialised monitoring bodies include the Venice Commission (advising on constitutional matters), GRECO (anti-corruption), and the CPT (prevention of torture).

Membership grew substantially after 1989 to include Central and Eastern European states. The Russian Federation, a member since 1996, was expelled on 16 March 2022 following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the first expulsion in the organisation's history. Belarus is not a member. As of the mid-2020s, the CoE comprises 46 member states covering roughly 700 million people.