The Council of Europe’s Double Standards

5. Conclusions

The standards for the member states’ constitutions adopted by the various Council of Europe committees in connection with the Liechtenstein Affair are neither specified nor defined in the Assembly’s documents and opinions. Liechtenstein’s constitutional practice to date and that of the Council of Europe’s member states hitherto were neither sufficiently explored nor presented nor critically compared with each other in order to discover possible deficiencies. At all events, this contradicts the variety of the European constitutions’ fundamental principles which altogether incorporate the Council of Europe’s political plurality. The question has not yet been clarified as to whether the issue is the texts of the constitutions and/ or merely these states’ constitutional practice concerning the Council of Europe’s standards in the republics as well, as regards the standard the Council of Europe’s committees have selected as gauges, nor is it clear what ranking codified constitutional texts have regarding the Council of Europe as well. At all events, common law does not have the ranking in the constitutional European states that it does in the non-codified constitution of Great Britain.

This insight into presumed, or actual and in any case undesirable double standards leads to the question as to the minimum standard of democracy as the European heritage from the Council of Europe’s viewpoint. To date, there is no definition of the democratic standards by which the Council of Europe’ organs swear, but recently the Assembly and the Committee of Ministers have increased their efforts to get to the bottom of the matter.