ITALIANS SEE COUNCIL AS NEW INSTRUMENT FOR PEACE

Grey River Argus, 25 August 1949, Page 5

ITALIANS SEE COUNCIL AS NEW INSTRUMENT FOR PEACE

(By William Hardcastle, a Reuter Correspondent in Rome). Italians are above all interested in the Council of Europe as a new instrument for peace. When the Council meets for the first time at Strasbourg this month, they will therefore be watching above all how the Assembly gets down to business and the impression which it is making upon the public and upon the member governments. These factors, they believe, will be the test of the Council’s usefulness in the cause of European peace. Government officials here describe the Italian Government as favouring the strengthening of the Council by all possible means with a view to the eventual surrender to it of certain national sovereign rights. From a long term point of view, the Council is regarded here as a vehicle for the fulfilment of Count Sforza’s expressed belief that Europe’s permanent salvation lies in the achievement of some sort of federation or union. Special attention is being given here to Artcle 27 of the Council’s Statute which leaves open fop later decision “the conditions under which the Committee of Ministers ‘collectively may be represented in the debates of the Consultative Assembly or whether individual representatives of the Committee may address the Assembly.” The Italian Government would like to see individual members of the Committee of Ministers given full freedom to take part in the Assembly debates as well as to be subject to questioning by members of the Assembly. Such an arrangement, it is believed, would serve to strengthen the joint responsibility and mutual accountability of the Council’s member nations. Government spokesmen predict that the Italian delegates will take an active part in the proposed discussions on Europe’s coal and tourist problems. Italy’s 18-man delegation is being elected by the Italian Parliament by a single majority of votes. Nine of its members will come from the Senate and nine from the Chamber of Deputies. This means that only members of the Government Coalition Parties—the Christian Democrats, Right-wing Socialists and Republicans—will be going to Strasbourg. Officials state that the 18man group will be regarded as a “delegation” only in the ibroadest sense of the term. For it is anticipated that the individual members will take divergent attitudes on many of the problems which come before the Council.