CPT: 17TH GENERAL REPORT 11 ORGANISATIONAL MATTERS The Convention establishing the CPT 24. All 47 member States of the Council of Europe are Parties to the ECPT. As the map in Appendix 3 makes clear, the Committee’s field of operations covers, with one notable exception, the entire territory of Europe. It remains open to the Committee of Ministers to invite any non-member State to accede to the Convention. When the time is ripe from a political standpoint, an invitation to Belarus to accede to the Convention would be both a sign of the Council of Europe’s wish to forge closer links with that country and a reminder of the obligations which membership of the Organisation entails. CPT membership 25. At the time of publication of this General Report, the CPT has 45 members. The seats in respect of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine are vacant. 26. The Committee’s membership has remained very stable over the last twelve months; in fact, not a single member left the Committee. This is in large part thanks to the system introduced by Protocol No. 2 to the Convention, whereby one half of the seats on the CPT are renewed every two years. Nevertheless, three new CPT members were elected during the period covered by this General Report: Mr Ivan JANKOVIĆ (in respect of Serbia), Mr Xavier RONSIN (in respect of France) and Ms Olivera VULIĆ (in respect of Montenegro). 27. The biennial renewal of the CPT’s membership is due to take place at the end of the current year, 21 seats falling vacant on 19 December 2007. However, to date, list of candidates have been received in respect of only seven of the countries concerned (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal). The CPT trusts that the national delegations in the Parliamentary Assembly of the remaining fourteen countries (Albania, Andorra, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, the Russian Federation, San Marino, the Slovak Republic and “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”) will put forward lists of candidates in the near future, so as to enable the election procedure to be completed in good time. 28. On 16 March 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly adopted Resolution 1540 (2007) on improving selection procedures for CPT members. The CPT welcomes many of the provisions of this text, in particular the emphasis put by the Assembly on the need for transparent and rigorous national selection procedures (including public calls for candidatures, consultation on candidates with both state and nongovernmental bodies, and interviews with short-listed candidates) as well as the encouragement given to the Assembly’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights to itself interview candidates if the selection procedures at national level are considered unsatisfactory.