Raad van Europa wil randvoorwaarden bij nieuw EU-agentschap voor mensenrechten (en)

The Council of Europe is set to call on EU leaders to prevent a further overlap of human rights monitoring by adding a new agency to the long list of existing organisations.

Plans to set up a European Agency on Fundamental Rights have caused concerns over duplication in the human rights and democracy fields, the Financial Times reports.

Commenting on the proposed agency, Terry Davis, secretary-general of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe said that "with all the best will in the world, I can't understand what it is going to do".

Instead, Mr Davis is planning to suggest to the European leaders that a merger between the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) should be considered.

He argues that the observers from the two bodies experienced some tensions on the ground when monitoring elections in Ukraine and Georgia, which should trigger questions of the long term need for both organisations.

"There is a tremendous overlap between the EU, OSCE and the Council of Europe", he said and added that "sometimes it's good to work together, but sometimes it's a cop-out, because governments don't want to choose who does what", according to the FT.

However, exactly how the merger between the Council of Europe and the OSCE should be worked out remains unanswered, as OSCE officials responded coldly to the idea and suggested that the two organisations have different objectives.

The Council of Europe, set up in 1949, has the advantage of the oldest human rights monitoring body and includes all 46 European countries, except for Belarus.

The Vienna-based OSCE was created as a predominantly security-related body in 1971 and covers 55 states, including the US, Canada and central Asian states.

The budgets of the two organisations are around €180m.