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Council of Europe Group of Eminent Persons Key points· The report “Living together: Combining freedom and diversity in 21st century Europe” was presented in Istanbul on 11 May 2011, after a consultation period of seven months.· It was elaborated by a Group of Eminent Persons appointed by Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland. Chaired by Joschka Fischer, the group included Emma Bonino, Timothy Garton Ash, Martin Hirsch, Danuta Hubner, Ayse Kadioglu, Sonja Licht, Vladimir Lukin and Javier Solana. The Group’s rapporteur was Edward Mortimer.· The report identifies the threats associated with rising intolerance and increasing diversity of the European population and makes specific recommendations on how to deal with them.The group was formed in cooperation with the Turkish Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (November 2010 – May 2011). Its report is divided in two parts: The threat to Council of Europe values and the proposed response. Who are the members of the Group of Eminent Persons? Joschka FISCHER (President) Joseph Martin (“Joschka”) Fischer is a German politician, member of the Alliance “90/the Greens”. Born in 1948, he has been Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany between 1998 and 2005. Fischer has served in two consecutive coalition governments headed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and proved to be an adept diplomat on the international scene. After an engaged militant activity in left-wing movements in his youth, he joined the newly founded party ''The Greens'' in 1977, mainly in Hessen and then as a member of the German Bundestag (1983). Joschka Fischer remains a popular politician and the Foreign Minister who supported the German participation in the Kosovo war, the first combat involving German soldiers after the Second World War. Edward MORTIMER (Rapporteur) Born in 1943, Edward Mortimer is an English author and journalist, currently Senior Vice President and Chief Programme Officer of the Salzburg Global Seminar. He is also member of the Advisory Council of Independent Diplomat. Edward Mortimer holds an M.A. in modern history from Oxford University and spent much of his career as a journalist, at The Times of London and later at The Financial Times (1987-1998), where he specialized on Middle East and foreign affairs. In 1998 he joined the United Nations where he served as a chief speechwriter and from 2001 to 2006 he was the Director of Communications in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. Timothy GARTON ASH Well-known through his activities as political writer, blogger and columnist, Timothy Garton Ash is also a contemporary historian focusing on communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe since 1945. Born in London in 1955, Mr. Garton Ash holds a B.A. and M.A. in modern history from Oxford University but has also studied at the Free University and Humboldt University in Berlin. He has lived in Berlin for several years, which gave him the opportunity to travel behind the “iron curtain” and to improve his knowledge of the German language and culture. His work covers the topic of the transformation of the former Eastern Bloc after 1989. Emma BONINO Emma Bonino is Vice-Chair of the Italian Senate. She has been Minister for International Trade and European Affairs. First elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1976, she has served either in the Italian or in the European Parliament continuously since then, except when she was European Commissioner. Between 1994 and 1999, she was European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Fisheries, Consumer Policy, Consumer Health Protection and Food Safety. As European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Emma Bonino was responsible for managing the European Union's Emergency Aid Program (ECHO). Martin HIRSCH Martin Hirsch is the former High Commissioner for Active Solidarities against Poverty and for Young People in the French government. He holds a Master in Neurobiology and attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure as well as the National School of Administration and then became an Auditor in the Council of State. He entered politics in 1997 as Head of Office of Bernard Kouchner (Secretary of State for Health and Social Action) and advisor to the Private Office of Martine Aubry. He became the President of Emmaüs France in 2002. He retired in 2007 following his nomination to the French government. Desiring to put an end to the left-right divide in French politics, he has implemented the “Income of Active Solidarity”, one of President Sarkozy’s campaign promises. Between 2009 and 2010 he has combined this function with the post of Youth Commissioner. After the regional elections, Mr. Hirsch left the French government and is now the President of the Civic Service Agency since May 2010. Danuta HUBNER Professor Danuta Hübner is a Polish economist, academic and policy maker. Born in 1948, she received her Masters degree from the Foreign Trade Department at the Warsaw School of Economics (1971) and a PhD in 1974. She is still teaching at the Warsaw School of Economics and was awarded honorary doctorates in economics and law by several universities including Sussex University and Economic University in Poznan. Before becoming an advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister in Poland in 1994, she has been engaged in building the new Polish economy after communism. As a Polish Advisor, Vice-Minister or Minister, she has promoted a new approach to industrial policy as well as the development to prepare Poland’s entry in the European Union and in the OECD. Ms. Hubner became the first Polish Minister for European Affairs and the first Polish member of the European Commission (regional policy). Since 2009, she has been a Member of the European Parliament. Ayse KADIOGLU Ayşe Kadıoğlu is Professor of Political Science at Sabancı University, Istanbul. She spent the 2009-2010 academic year as the Sabancı Fellow at the University of Oxford. She holds a PhD in Political Science, Boston University (1990) and an MA in International Relations, The University of Chicago (1984). Kadioglu has been contributing to the Sunday edition of the Istanbul daily Radikal for the past 10 years. She took a stand in defense of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink who was assassinated in 2007 in her piece “The Pigeon on the Bridge is Shot” in MERIP online. She is also one of the vanguard 100 Turkish public intellectuals who signed the apology statement that was published in 2009 with the aim of sharing the pain of the Armenians. Sonja LICHT Ms Licht is an internationally renowned sociologist and human rights and political activist. She had been part of the Yugoslav dissident movement from the late sixties and two decades later she became the founder of many local and international NGOs, including a number of women organisations. She continued her activism during the violent collapse of Former Yugoslavia in anti-war or women’s rights groups, for which she was nicknamed the “mother of civil society sector in Serbia”. Ms Licht managed (George Soros-funded) Open Society Fund in Belgrade, which during her tenure (from 1991 to 2003) supported thousands of projects totaling more than $100 million. Between 1991 and 1995 she co-chaired the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, a broad coalition of various European and North American civic organisations dedicated to peace, democracy and human rights. She is the founder and president of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence, which has prepared generations of young Serbian politicians for Serbia’s transition towards democracy and EU membership. Ms Licht also chairs the Serbian MoFA’s Council on Foreign Relations. Vladimir LUKIN Vladimir Petrovich Lukin is a Russian political activist born in 1937. Mr. Lukin is currently the Human Rights Commissioner of Russia (since 2004, reelected in 2009) and the President of the Russian Paralympics Committee. Graduate in History of Moscow Lenin State Educational Institute, Vladimir Lukin also has a degree in Sciences and has worked as a researcher for several years. He has been a senior reviewer in the editorial board of Problems of Peace and Socialism Magazine (Prague) for thirty years. From 1987 to 1990, Mr. Lukin led the Department of Pacific and South-East Asia Countries and the Office of Evaluations and Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (USSR). In 1989, Mr. Lukin became the leader of the group for analysis and forecast at the Secretariat of the Supreme Council of the USSR. He received the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation and worked in the Organization of American States where he had been appointed “Ambassador of the year” (1993). He is one of the founders of the liberal-democratic Party “Yabloko” (1993) and served at the International Affairs Committee in the Duma before becoming a Deputy and Vice-Speaker. Javier SOLANA MADARIAGA Dr. Francisco Javier Solana Madariaga, born in 1942 in Madrid, is a Spanish physicist and socialist politician. He received a doctorate in physics and was a teacher at Madrid University before joining the Socialist Party in 1964 and becoming a member of the Parliament in 1977. From 1982 to 1996 he held several cabinet posts (Minister of Culture, Minister of Education and Science). In 1992 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs and was appointed three years later as NATO Secretary General in a period of intense involvement in the Balkans. In 1999 Dr. Solana became Secretary General of the Council of the EU and its first High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy for ten years (CFSP). Contact: Council of Europe Press Service [email protected] |
