Member States
Starting with 18 member states, soon all member states of the Council of Europe joined the Venice Commission and since 2002 non-European states can also become full members. Today, as of 2012, the Commission counts 58 member states – the 47 member states of the Council of Europe and 11 other countries. Belarus is as associate member and there are six observers. The European Commission, Palestinian National Authority and South Africa have a special co-operation status similar to that of the observers. The EU Committee of the Regions, OSCE/ODIHR and IACL/AIDC (The International Association of Constitutional Law | Association internationale de droit constitutionnel) participate in the plenary sessions of the Commission.
Read more about this topic: Venice Commission
Famous quotes containing the words member and/or states:
“When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him, asserting his identity.... We are designed, coded, it seems, to place the highest priority on being individuals, and we must do this first, at whatever cost, even if it means disability for the group.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)
“I would rather be known as an advocate of equal suffrage than to speak every night on the best-paying platforms in the United States and ignore it.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)