Page - 5 - in Austrian Law Journal, Volume 1/2020

ALJ 2020 Benedek 4 The Consultative Assembly (renamed Parliamentary Assembly in 1974) played a major role in addressing the challenge of the Greek coup by the colonels. It was quick to denounce the coup already in April 1967 thanks to an Austrian parliamentarian, Karl Czernetz, and express its solidarity with the Greek people,7 and it appointed a special rapporteur first in the person of Willem E. Siegmann and then Max van der Stoel, both from the Netherlands. Based on visits to Greece they produced very clear reports on the situation on the ground. Finally, Max van der Stoel was declared persona non grata by the Greek authorities. He was accompanied by a young civil servant by the name of Peter Leuprecht. In a recent article, published under the title of ”Fighting a dictatorship in the “homeland of democracy”” written on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Council of Europe,8 Peter Leuprecht shared some memories of this time. According to his account, “the ’Greek question’ was a test case of how solid the Council was and how committed it was to its fundamental principles.” He reported that the Assembly was a driving force behind the campaign of the Council against the military regime. He had been in charge of helping the rapporteur on his trips and in preparing his reports, which had a major impact on the action taken by the Assembly. While the United States tried to persuade the Council of Europe not to take action against the NATO ally, the rapporteur was not convinced by the explanations of the junta that this was a revolution in order to establish a better democracy and that it was necessary in order to fight the communist threat. Leuprecht also pointed to the nationalist and religious connotations of the rule of the colonels. 3. Role of personalities Max van der Stoel9 was the first to bring convincing evidence of the so-called “administrative practice of torture”. On the basis of his reports the Assembly recommended to the Committee of Ministers the suspension of Greece. Being a man of strong principles, he contributed to the isolation and finally the fall of the dictatorship. He later became foreign minister of his country, the Netherlands and the first High Commissioner on National Minorities of OSCE. One street in Athens has been named after him. His assistant at the time, Peter Leuprecht himself became Director of Human Rights and Deputy Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. As a man of principles he left the Council of Europe in 1997 because he was not convinced that the admission of some new states which missed the necessary qualifications, such as Russia, could be absorbed by the Council of Europe without damage to the organization.10 B. Impact on the Council of Europe 1. State complaint against Turkey The “Greek case” appears to have had some impact a few years later, when a military coup in Turkey in 1980 resulted in the dissolution of the parliament and the abrogation of the 7 Consultative Assembly, Decision 346 of 23 June 1967, 10 YECHR (1967), 94 et seq. 8 Peter Leuprecht, supra note 5. 9 Peter Leuprecht, Max van der Stoel – a tireless defender of Greek democracy, Vol. 22 SECURITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS 183- 185 (2011); see also Antoine Buyse, Max van der Stoel (1925-2011), The indefatigable Traveller, in THE FACES OF HUMAN RIGHTS 231-238 (Kasey MacCal-Smith, Jan Wouters and Felipe Gomez Isa eds., Hart. 2019). 10 Wolfgang Benedek, Peter Leuprecht, in THE FACES OF HUMAN RIGHTS 259-268 (Kasey MacCal-Smith, Jan Wouters and Felipe Gomez Isa eds., Hart. 2019).