Chapter 2. Europe and Statelessness of individuals rights and freedoms. After 1957, some competition becomes visible between the CoE and the EEC in terms of harmonized European standard setting. “The Council of Europe was reduced to using international law while the EEC had its own community law, which was binding on its members. However, although the EEC was able to adopt legislative provisions which were directly applicable in its member states, these were mostly confined to economic matters. To assert its position in the face of competition from the EEC, the Council of Europe therefore decided in the early 1960s to direct its energies towards areas of legal co-operation which were (as yet) unexplored by the Six: civil law, criminal law, administrative law and public international law.”421 For matters relating to nationality and statelessness, two relevant legal instruments are adopted, both in the context of the CoE. The first is the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) in 1950422, which remains to this day the most influential human rights instrument in Europe and is an important milestone for the protection of human rights, including of stateless people, in Europe, despite not including the right to a nationality explicitly. Secondly, and against the background of the aforementioned focus of the CoE, a treaty focused specifically on multiple nationality was drafted – the Convention on the Reduction of Cases of Multiple Nationality and on Military Obligations in Cases of Multiple Nationality. Both treaties are considered in more depth in paragraph 3.2 of this study. There thus seems to be some willingness to address nationality matters within the CoE, also evidenced by Recommendations of the CoE Committee of Ministers relating to statelessness and nationality in this period.423 Overall, however, the developments within the CoE and the predecessors of the EU relating to nationality and statelessness are very limited in the years after World War II and during the Cold War. 2.6. THE END OF THE COLD WAR: A NEW EUROPE? After World War II, we saw an age of tensions between states rising, as well as improving occasionally, with different crises and wars, such as those in Vietnam and the Middle East. It is “[a]gainst this background of strained international relations”424 that the focus organizations of this study developed. 421 422 423 424 Birte Wassenberg, History of the Council of Europe (Council of Europe Publishing 2013) 89. Since then, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (CETS No. 005) has been amended several times by the introduction of Protocols to it. Eg CoE CM Recommendation No. R (83) 1 of the Committee of Ministers to the Member States on the Stateless nomads and nomads of undetermined nationality (356th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies, 22 February 1983); CoE CM Recommendation No. R (84) 21 of the Committee of Ministers to the Member States on the acquisition by refugees of the nationality of the host state (377th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies, 14 November 1984). See also para 3.2.2. Birte Wassenberg, History of the Council of Europe (Council of Europe Publishing 2013) 19. Intersentia 77