Council of Europe stamps were issued on a regular basis with texts highlighting his contribution to devising some 20 proposals for a flag at the request of Paul Lévy, the Director of Information, who had been tasked with submitting proposals to the relevant committee of the Assembly and to its rapporteur, Robert Bichet, member of parliament for the Franche-Comté region. It was through philately, first of all, that I got to know Arsène Heitz, the “father” of the European flag, a colleague responsible for sorting mail within the administration, who had great artistic talents and was strongly committed to the European cause. The adoption of the European emblem was the result of a long process during which many proposals were considered, beginning in August 1950 – barely a year after the entry into force of the Council of Europe’s statute – by a committee set up by the Consultative Assembly comprising members of parliament from the 12 and then 15 member states. When I joined the Council of Europe on 1 May 1960, I never thought that one day I would write an article on how, five years earlier, the “sky blue flag with 12 gold stars” had been adopted in two stages: a unanimous vote by the Parliamentary Assembly on 25 October 1955, followed by the Committee of Ministers’ ratification on 8 December of the same year. Charles Kohler, tells us this fascinating story, whilst doing justice to his colleagues: Arsène Heitz, the designer of the flag, a modest official working in the mail office, and Paul Lévy, who led the project in his capacity as the first Director of Information of the Council of Europe. More importantly, throughout the historical changes our continent has faced since the 1950s, it became a symbol of the values on which the European project is based: freedom, democracy, human rights and peace. Adopted by the Council of Europe in autumn 1955, the European flag also became the banner of the European Communities 30 years later.
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