The main component parts of the Council of Europe are:

• the Committee of Ministers, composed of the 47 Foreign ministers or their Strasbourg-based deputies (ambassadors/permanent representatives), which is the Organisation's decision-making body. Its Chair changes every six months according to the member countries’ alphabetical order. The Ministers’ Deputies meet at least once a month. They draw up the Council of Europe’s activities programme and adopt its budget. They also decide what follow-up should be given to proposals of the parliamentary Assembly and the specialist ministerial conference that the Council of Europe regularly organises.

• the Parliamentary Assembly, grouping 630 members (318 representatives and 318 substitutes) from the 47 national parliaments. The current President is the Austrian Socialist Peter Schieder. The Parliamentary Assembly is a deliberately body and hold four week-long plenary sessions a year. It debates on a wide range of social issues and its recommendations to the Committee of Ministers have been at the root of many of the Council of Europe’s achievements. The Assembly plays a key role in the accession process for new members and in monitoring compliance with undertakings entered into.

• the European Court of Human Rights, which is made up of one judge from each of the 47 member states, makes judgments in respect of possible violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. Where the Court finds that a particular government is in violation of the Convention, that government is obliged to take corrective action. Judgments of the Court, which establish a general principle in respect of one country, should, in theory, be acted on by other countries, which are similarly in violation of the Convention. However, in such cases, the government in question may fail to take the necessary action. Until recently a separate body, the European Commission on Human Rights, first reviewed cases under the European Convention. In late 1988 the functions of the Commission were taken over by the Court, as part of a reorganisation of the latter.

Some practical achievements

• 196 legally binding European treaties or conventions many of which are open to non-member states on topics ranging from human rights to the fight against organised crime and from the prevention of torture to data protection or cultural co-operation. One of the most significant – the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
• Recommendations to governments setting out policy guidelines on such issues as legal matters, health, education, culture and sport.

Pan-European dimension

Since November 1990, the accession of 21 countries of central and eastern Europe (the most recent being Serbia and Montenegro in April 2003) has given the Council of Europe a genuine pan-European dimension, so that it is now the organisation that represents Greater Europe.