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As early as 1989, the transition to political democracy in Central and Eastern European countries led European multilateral institutions to reflect on instruments that should be developed to assist these difficult political changes and facilitate the integration of emerging democracies into an enlarged Europe. Founded in 1949 an considered to be a "democratic club" the Council of Europe was the first European institution to face rapid enlargement, thus becoming an ideological and methodological "laboratory" for the future enlargement of the European Union. It is precisely from this laboratory that a process of monitoring of new member states' compliance with democratic norms and practices was born. The admission of countries which were still far from having adopted - and even further from applying - these norms of pluralist democracy and the rule of law, led the Council of Europe to thoroughly reconsider the methodology for ensuring that enlargement would not be made at the expense of the democratic principles which constitute the foundations of the Organisation.
The concept of monitoring was not new in itself. According to the Statute of the Organisation all member states have to respect the founding principles: rule of law and democratic pluralism. Without being explicitly mentioned in the Statute, compliance with these principles implies continuous control.
The mechanism monitoring the obligations of new member states was officially introduced at the 1st Council of Europe Summit in Vienna in 1993, when heads of states and governments declared themselves "resolved to ensure full compliance with the commitments accepted by all member States within the Council of Europe." and "to facilitate compliance with the obligations through constructive political monitoring, based on dialogue, cooperation and assistance." The first formal monitoring procedures began in 1995 within the Parliamentary Assembly, and a year later within the Committee of Ministers. Since their introduction, these procedures have been constantly evolving, both to improve the mechanisms themselves, but also to include issues specific to each new member state. As time goes by, monitoring mechanisms diversify and increased attention is brought to transversal issues.
The purpose of my research is to analyse the emergence, the development and the functioning of the main monitoring mechanisms of the Council of Europe, in particular those applied by the two main bodies of the organisation: the Parliamentary Assembly (country-by-country monitoring), and the Committee of Ministers (thematic monitoring applied to all member states), as a continuous learning method of democracy. These mechanisms are not limited to a grid of criteria that serves to establish a hierarchy of democracies. From the beginning, monitoring was conceived not only as a control method for new member states, but also as a process of "socialisation" to the rules of the democratic game, even if it was not explicitly presented as such at its inception.
As a technique, monitoring seems to belong to the widest category of instruments available to international organisations in order to bring their member states - or future member states - to translate the principles of democracy into government practice. It represents a conscious preference for adaptation, instead of ex-ante conditionality and sanctions, which it should help avoid. As such, and given the fact that some of the new member states of the Council of Europe are also candidates for membership in the European Union, it seems particularly interesting to study monitoring while taking into consideration the economic assistance brought by the latter. By supporting adaptation to the market economy, such assistance is meant to contribute to the institutionalisation of the rule of law, with the specificity of being brought forth in the pre-adhesion period.
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