Kosovo's ability to fulfill the Council of Europe membership criteria: A comparative perspective

June 2014

This policy report, thus, makes two interrelated arguments. First, it underscores the benefits of Kosovo's accession to the CoE, highlighting that membership is in the interest of both Kosovo's citizens but also in the interest of the CoE itself. CoE will never be able to fully accomplish its mission of promoting democracy and human rights in Europe if, as has hitherto been the case, there is a corner of the continent over which the European Court of Human Rights has no jurisdiction and cannot hear cases brought by the Europeans that live there. Second, this policy report provides a comparative analysis of where Kosovo stands vis-à-vis other CoE and non-CoE members in terms of fulfilling the membership criteria. The report purposefully uses quantitative data from widely used and respected academic resources in order to make the claim that Kosovo does fulfill CoE membership criteria and, moreover, that in all of the key indicators for these criteria, Kosovo performs just as well as - and sometimes even better than - many recent CoE member states. In doing so, moreover, the paper also critically analyzes the latest report by the CoE Assembly Member Bjorn von Sydow on “The situation in Kosovo and the role of the Council of Europe”, highlighting the areas where the report is unnecessarily critical of Kosovo's institutions as well as the areas where significant improvements have been achieved since the von Sydow report 4 was written.