Monday 8th August 1949 marked the start of a momentous week for the Council of Europe. It began with a meeting chaired by Belgium’s long-serving Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak, which saw the first gathering of the Committee of Ministers. Later in the week there was a similar debut for the Consultative Assembly, the body that would eventually evolve into the Parliamentary Assembly.
The decision to base the Council of Europe in Strasbourg followed a proposal by the British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who believed that the location symbolised hopes for constructing a new kind of Europe. From the Thirty Years War of the 17th century to the mass destruction of the Second World War, the capital of Alsace had been the focus of conflict and division. Now it was home to an organisation that would work to bring harmony, to safeguard the rule of law and to protect individuals’ human rights. Speaking at the ceremony, the French Socialist leader Léon Blum called on the delegates “to show boldness and even temerity”. “I see the creation of the Council of Europe – or I wish to see in it - one of the great beginnings of history,” he told the gathering.
