PREFACE
Stories in history
Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe
Gabriella Battaini-Dragoni, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe
THE BEGINNING
Summer 1949 in Strasbourg
Félix Kappler
THE 1950s
René Cassin, symbol of the Europe of human rights
Guido Raimondi
12 gold stars on a sky blue background
Charles Kohler
THE 1960s
In defence of Cinderella
Jan Malinowski
Fighting a dictatorship in the “homeland of democracy”
Peter Leuprecht
THE 1970s
An Iberian dawn
Roger Massie
Abolishing the death penalty in Europe
Allard Plate
THE 1980s
“Ostpolitik” makes its appearance
Bruno Haller
Travels beyond the Iron Curtain
Bruno Haller
Take it like a man
Mark Neville
One November night on the motorway
Marc Scheuer
Europe, our common home
Alexander Orlov
My road to Damascus
Catherine Lalumière
THE 1990s
A memorable tour
Catherine Lalumière
A Venitian story
Gianni Buquicchio
A marriage of head and heart
Catherine Trautmann
An Albanian summer
Claudia Luciani
Building a Greater Europe
Hans Winkler
A dress that tells a story
Eliana Carvalho
Reconciling Europe with itself
Jacques Warin
From indifference to difference: a Bosnian story
Simona Granata-Menghini and Tanja Rakusic-Hadzic
From “Mani pulite” to “Caviar-Gate”
Gianluca Esposito
Building democracy on a local basis
Ulrich Bohner
THE 2000s
The prisoners of Gobustan
Catherine Hugel
Heart-to-heart
Eva Konecna and Johan Friestedt
A new ambition for the European continent
Denis Huber and Hanna Machińska
Fighting against violence
Maud de Boer-Buquicchio
Blood and honey
Denis Huber
The wheel turning in a vacuum
Tatiana Termacic
THE 2010s
Violence and serenity
Snežana Samardžić-Marković
Culture, the foundation for a European renaissance
Gabriella Battaini-Dragoni
POSTFACE
A human enterprise
Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic
APPENDICES
The 47 member states of the Council of Europe
The Council of Europe in brief
Key dates
The authors