The Eastern Policy of the Council of Europe in the late 1980s - 1990s (Vitaly Pavlovsky)

Раздел - "Международные отношения"Still quite recently, the Council of Europe was a bulwark of "the cold war". Adhering to the ideas of pluralist democracy and human rights, it embodied a system of values different from and opposed to the Soviet one. This situation lasted till the mid-1960s. The reforms of the second half of the 1980s in the Soviet Union, connected with the name of Mikhail Gorbachev, the revival of the policy of democratization in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe made a qualitative change not only in the relations of the Council of Europe with the Soviet bloc countries but in the role of this organization as well. Beginning with 1989 the Eastern bloc countries start to seek support in the Council of Europe for their democratic development not within the framework of the East-West dialogue, but within the context of their national interests, regarding the Strasbourg organization as a first step on the road "back to Europe". On September 25, 1989 PACE adopted the text of Resolution 1112 "On cooperation between the East and the West at the end of the X X century". The document presents the vision of the future European architecture of a single Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. The principle of solidarity on the basis of common European values must underlie the policy on the continent. This most important position demonstrated the necessity for the renewal of the political role of the Council of Europe. After the admission of the Russian Federation to the membership on February 6, 1996, the Council of Europe has became a truly pan-European organization. The population of the member-states makes up about 800 mln people; the countries involved have different levels of development — so these circumstances determined the necessity to adapt to a new more diverse, complex and unstable space. Promotion of democracy and its monitoring come to be the main directions of the EU activities. N ew priorities emerge: migration, corruption, social vulnerability and minorities. The main motive for the membership in the EU has been, and still is the fact that this membership paves the way to the full membership in the "hard-core" organizations of European and Atlantic cooperation, first of all, in the EU and NATO. The very first years of the expansion, in fact, outlined the main problems of the Eastern policy of the Council of Europe in n ew conditions, such as the search for compromise between its high standards and the assessment of real situation in the new member-states, avoiding the predominance of a political dimension in the evaluation of internal development of separate states. Maintaining the significance of the Council of Europe as the "European consciousness" will be possible only if its principles are realized in all member-states on the basis of the perception of their essence and value. Abiding by their commitments is the question of political will of the leadership of the states, the level of their political elite but not of the severity of sanctions