ABSTRACT
The political and economic restructuring of eastern Europe in the 1990s has been closely associated with a reorganization and expansion of European political alliances and institutions. The pursuit of democracy and human rights lies at the very heart of the Council of Europe, with its 1950 European Convention on Human Rights establishing a sophisticated mechanism for monitoring and protecting human rights. One of the most interesting aspects of the Council of Europe's cultural policy, though, is that it is premised on an argument that 'Diversity lies at the heart of Europe's. Indeed, Habermas suggests further that 'the cultural peripheral conditions for European modernity, capitalist developmental poverty, ecological devastation, political repression, and cultural disintegration braid together into an increasingly desperate feedback loop'. While the European Union has largely been driven by economic and political interests, designed to ensure that Europe's economy remains competitive on an international stage, it is by no means the oldest or broadest European political institution.
