Thorbjørn Jagland reelected secretary-general of the Council of Europe

Posted on July 3, 2014 4:42 am by brusselsdiplomatic in NEWS // 0 Comments

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders congratulates Thorbjørn Jagland on his election as Secretary General of the Council of Europe. On 24 June, Mr Jagland got a large majority of the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe behind him. He succeeds himself at the head of Europe’s leading human rights organisation.

Didier Reynders is satisfied that Thorbjørn Jagland will have the opportunity to continue to work on the ambitious reform program he launched. During his first term, Belgium supported those reforms, which should give more visibility and clout to the Council of Europe as the ‘continent’s conscience’.

The Minister looks especially forward to working with Jagland during the Belgian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers, from November 2014 to May 2015. Our country will use the presidency to bring about a discussion on the institutional architecture for protecting human rights and democracy in Europe.

The former Norwegian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was elected in 2009 for a first term as Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. He organised an internal reform and gave the organisation a sharper profile as the guardian of European values.

The Council of Europe is an intergovernmental pan-European organisation with 47 Member States, including the 28 EU Member States as well as Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. The Council oversees 212 conventions and supervises the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. More information on http://www.coe.int.

bio:

T. Jarglanf

Mr Thorbjørn Jagland is the 13th Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The Secretary General has the overall responsibility for the strategic management of the Organisation. Mr Jagland was elected in September 2009.

The former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Norway, Thorbjørn Jagland, aged 63, was also the President of the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) and the leader of the Norwegian Labour Party. He is currently the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize.