You want a brief answer to such a question? I have not done an extensive comparative analysis or study of the impact of the charter across Council of Europe member states. Professor Chris Himsworth, who gave evidence to the committee, has written a book about that, which members could read.
The Council of Europe has established monitoring missions to visit member states regularly. There have been two to the UK; there should be another next year. Findings from those missions have been incorporated into analyses of the extent of compliance across member states. In other countries, there has been litigation in which the charter has been invoked, but I do not know of any particularly high-profile cases.
It is difficult to assess any change in culture, because most Council of Europe member states have a legal system that is described as monist—in other words, international law automatically becomes part of domestic law; there is no requirement for legislation to incorporate it. We have a dualist system, which is relatively rare among Council of Europe member states. That means that we actively have to incorporate international law.
Countries with monist systems usually have constitutions. Basic freedoms and limitations on the extent to which federal or national Government or Parliament can interfere with the powers of local government are generally set out in the constitution, and are fairly long standing—by which I mean that they have existed for decades or, in some cases, centuries. France is an excellent example; there has been little change in French local government since the French revolution.
The impact of the charter on culture has been minuscule in many European countries, because the culture—in relation to the clear separation of powers, knowing where the boundaries are and the extent to which there can be interference—has been in place for a long time. You can see that by reading any random article of the French or German constitutions.
Comparisons can be made with countries such as Ireland and those in the rest of the UK, because they are most similar to Scotland, in the sense that the UK does not have a written constitution—although Ireland does, obviously. Therefore, the impact of incorporation, in relation to a culture change, might be more significant in Scotland than it has been in most member states.
The only exception that I will make to that is the culture shift that has taken place in eastern European states following the fall of the Soviet Union. The culture that those countries inherited had a particular character. The Council of Europe has been doing quite a lot of work to strengthen local democracy in emerging democracies, and the charter has had a significant role in that.