Arnold Struycken

After studying law at the University of Amsterdam, Arnold Struycken became a member of the Hague bar and worked for thirteen years as a lawyer.

During the war, Arnold Struycken volunteered to patrol in the Port of Alexandria, where Italian airplanes and frogmen were trying to place mines, and after that, as an ambulance driver on the Egyptian front during the battle of Al Alamein.

Arnold Struycken first held the position of Political Director of the Council of Europe from 1949 to 1954 and was as such the Committee of Ministers's main adviser.

From May 1954, he was Clerk of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe with rank of Deputy Secretary General, until his early passing in September 1955.

He was named rapporteur of the committee of experts in charge, from March 1950, of the preliminary work designed to lay the ground for a European Convention of Human Rights.

[5] Along with other Council officials, he recommended that the prelude to the Ode to Joy be adopted as European anthem, after it was suggested as early as 1929 by the Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi, President of the Paneuropean Movement.