Drafting the European Political Authority: The Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe as an Arena of Inter-Parliamentary Conceptual Controversies

In this paper, we propose a political interpretation of the origins of the Council of Europe with a special emphasis on its parliamentary assembly. In the light of current EU and European history studies the Council of Europe is often treated as a failed political project. We argue that this stems partly from the fact that there is lack of knowledge about the deliberative practices and rhetoric that take place in the Council and its role as a political institution. Focusing merely on the output of the contingent decisions overlooks the conceptual richness and argumentation of the politics in the Council of Europe. Until 1974 the parliamentary organ of the Council was called the Consultative Assembly. We take a look at the early history of the Assembly since its founding in 1949. The Assembly was crucial in the reconfiguration of the historical link between parliaments and nation-states between 1949 and 1951. It was an arena where debates over key questions and concepts in post-war Europe took place. In 1949 the Consultative Assembly took on itself the drafting of “European Political Authority”. In this context the main question was to define the political structure of the Council of Europe either as an inter-governmental or supranational organization. In the paper, we interpret the conceptual disagreements over various proposals by analysing the committee reports and minutes related to the shaping of the European Political Authority.