Venice Commission

The idea to create a Commission for Democracy through Law as a group of experts in constitutional law was conceived by the then Minister for Community Policies of Italy, Antonio Mario La Pergola.[2] The election of the name was based on the theory of La Pergola that expressed that sustainable democracies could only be built in a constitutional framework based on the rule of law.

The formal proposal for the creation of the commission was made by the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gianni De Michelis, who invited the other Foreign Affairs ministers of the Council of Europe to the Conference for the Creation of the European Commission for Democracy through Law that was held at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice from 31 March to 1 April 1989. At this meeting, Foreign Affairs and Justice ministers reunited with representatives of the Constitutional Courts of the 21 countries of the Council of Europe.

The committee of ministers, seeking to assist the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, approved the creation of the Commission as a partial agreement at the session in Venice from 19 to 20 January 1990. The Foreign Affairs and Justice Ministers of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia also participated as observers in this meeting.

On 10 May 1990 ministers from 18 countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey) of the Council of Europe adopted the statute of the Commission.

  Member

  Associate member

  Observer

  Special status or cooperation

Starting with 18 member states, soon all member states of the Council of Europe joined the Venice Commission and since 2002 non-European states can also become full members. As of 13 July 2014, the Commission counts 60 member states – the 47 member states of the Council of Europe and 13 other countries.[3] Belarus is an associate member and there are five observers. The Palestinian National Authority and South Africa have a special co-operation status similar to that of the observers.[4] The EU, OSCE/ODIHR and IACL/AIDC (International Association of Constitutional Law / Association internationale de droit constitutionnel) participate in the plenary sessions of the Commission.

The members are "senior academics, particularly in the fields of constitutional or international law, supreme or constitutional court judges or members of national parliaments".[5][6] Acting on the Commission in their individual capacity, the members are appointed for four years by the participating countries. The current and former members include, amongst other notable academics and judges:[7]

• Ugo Mifsud Bonnici (Professor of Law and former President of Malta),
• Talija Chabrieva, Russian jurist, author of the 2020 amendments to the Constitution of Russia[8]
• Jean-Claude Colliard (Chancellor of University Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne, former member of the Constitutional Council),
• Christoph Grabenwarter (Judge at the Constitutional Court of Austria),
• Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem (Former Judge, Federal Constitutional Court of Germany),
• Jan Erik Helgesen (Professor at University of Oslo),
• Hanna Suchocka (Former Prime Minister of Poland, Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Chair of the Constitutional Law Department)
• Gret Haller (Senior Lecturer at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Germany, former President of the Swiss Parliament),
• Klemen Jaklič (Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, Harvard University),
• Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha (Professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Judge of Supreme Federal Court of Brazil),
• Jeffrey Jowell (Professor of Law and former Dean of University College London),
• Philip Dimitrov (Former Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Member of the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria),[9]
• Kaarlo Tuori (Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Helsinki),
• Pieter van Dijk (State Councillor, Chair of the Constitutional Law Committee, and former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights),
• Jan Velaers (Professor at University of Antwerp)

Jan Erik Helgesen,[10] a professor at the University of Oslo, was president of the Commission for several years, through to 2009, later becoming 1st Vice-President. From December 2009 to December 2021, Gianni Buquicchio held the presidency.[11][1] As of 2022, Claire Bazy-Malaurie has been president since December 2021.[1]

Thomas Markert became Secretary General of the Commission. The Secretary General heads the Commission's secretariat at the Council of Europe's headquarters in Strasbourg.

The main focus of the work of the Venice Commission is on draft constitutions and constitutional amendments but the Commission also covers para-constitutional law, i.e. laws which are close to the Constitution, such as minority legislation or electoral law.

Requests for opinions come from the participating states and the organs of the Council of Europe or international organisations or bodies participating in the Venice Commission's work. The opinions adopted by the Commission are not binding but are mostly followed by member states.

The areas of the Commission's activities are as follows:

The Venice Commission's primary task is to assist and advise individual countries in constitutional matters in order to improve functioning of democratic institutions and the protection of human rights. Already in 1991 the Commission helped in creating the first democratic Constitution of Romania since 1947. In 2012, in an invited Opinion, the Venice Commission expressed several criticisms of church-related legislation in Hungary.[12]

The work of the Commission in the field of elections, referendums and political parties is steered by the Council for Democratic Elections (CDE). The CDE is made up of representatives of the Venice Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The aim of the Council for Democratic Elections is to ensure co-operation in the electoral field between the Venice Commission as a legal body and the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress of the Council of Europe as political bodies in charge of election observation, in order to promote the European common values in this field – the principles of the European electoral heritage.

The Commission identifies and develops standards in the area of elections through:

• Codes of good practice on elections, on referendums and on political parties
• Opinions - mostly joint ones with OSCE/ODIHR - on electoral legislation
• Workshops for Central Election Commissions (CEC) and Courts
• Assistance missions to CECs and legal advice to the PACE
• "Vota" database of electoral legislation

Another branch of the Commission's activities includes co-operation with the constitutional courts and equivalent bodies. Since its creation, the Venice Commission has been aware that it is not sufficient to assist the states in the adoption of democratic constitutions but that these texts have to be implemented in reality. Key players in this field are constitutional courts and equivalent bodies exercising constitutional jurisdiction.

Cooperation with Constitutional Courts, ordinary courts and ombudspersons is done by means of:

• Opinions on and for Constitutional Courts, ordinary courts and for Ombudspersons (including amicus curiae briefs and amicus ombud opinions)
• Leading constitutional case-law – bulletin and CODICES database
• Regional co-operation with Courts outside Europe
• World Conference on Constitutional Justice
• Seminars and conferences with Constitutional Courts
• Venice Forum – advice and exchange between Constitutional courts
• Joint Council on Constitutional Justice (representatives of Courts and members of the Commission)

The Commission's transnational activities enable it to carry out the main duties laid down in its Statute, which are to improve the functioning of democratic institutions, knowledge of legal systems and understanding of the legal culture of countries working with it.

While most of the work of the Commission is country specific, the Commission also prepares, through its own initiative and at request of outside bodies such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, studies and reports addressing topics of general interest in the member and observer states. Transnational topics are also covered in the Unidem seminars (University for Democracy) and published in the Science and Technique of Democracy collection.

In June 2022, the European Union asked the candidate countries of Ukraine[13] and Moldova,[14] and the applicant country of Georgia[15] to implement various reforms suggested by the Venice Commission in order to proceed with EU integration.

• Constitutionalism
• Rule according to higher law

• Bartole, Sergio (2020). The Internationalisation of Constitutional Law: A View from the Venice Commission. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5099-4149-0.
• Lauri Bode-Kirchhoff: Why the Road from Luxembourg to Strasbourg leads through Venice: the Venice Commission as a link between the EU and the ECtHR, in: Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou et al. (eds.): Human Rights Law in Europe. The Influence, Overlaps and Contradictions of the EU and the ECHR, Routledge 2014, p. 55-72, ISBN 978-0-415-82599-3
• Craig, Paul (2017). "Transnational Constitution-Making: The Contribution of the Venice Commission on Law and Democracy". UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational, and Comparative Law. 2: 57.
• de Visser, Maartje (2015). "A Critical Assessment of the Role of the Venice Commission in Processes of Domestic Constitutional Reform". American Journal of Comparative Law. 63 (4): 963–1008. doi:10.5131/AJCL.2015.0029. S2CID 146893530.
• Hoffmann-Riem, W. (2014). "The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe - Standards and Impact". European Journal of International Law. 25 (2): 579–597. doi:10.1093/ejil/chu029.
• Malinverni, Giorgio (2002). "The Contribution of the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission)". The Prevention of Human Rights Violations. pp. 123–137. ISBN 978-90-04-48080-3.
• Nergelius, Joakim (2015). "The Role of the Venice Commission in Maintaining the Rule of Law in Hungary and in Romania". Constitutional Crisis in the European Constitutional Area. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG. pp. 304–321. ISBN 978-3-8487-1996-9.
• Turkut, Emre (2021). "The Venice Commission and Rule of Law Backsliding in Turkey, Poland and Hungary". European Convention on Human Rights Law Review. 2 (2): 209–240. doi:10.1163/26663236-bja10028. ISSN 2666-3228. S2CID 239668252.

• http://www.venice.coe.int
• http://www.codices.coe.int