The Council of Europe (CoE; French: Conseil de l'Europe, CdE) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a population of approximately 675 million; it operates with an annual budget of approximately 500 million euros.The organisation is distinct from the European Union (EU), although it is sometimes confused with it, partly because the EU has adopted the original European flag, created for the Council of Europe in 1955, as well as the European anthem. No country has ever joined the EU without first belonging to the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is an official United Nations Observer.Being an international organization, the Council of Europe cannot make laws, but it does have the ability to push for the enforcement of select international agreements reached by member states on various topics. The best-known body of the Council of Europe is the European Court of Human Rights, which functions on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The council's two statutory bodies are the Committee of Ministers, comprising the foreign ministers of each member state, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which is composed of members of the national parliaments of each member state. The Commissioner for Human Rights is an institution within the Council of Europe, mandated to promote awareness of and respect for human rights in the member states. The Secretary General presides over the secretariat of the organisation. Other major CoE bodies include the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines (EDQM) and the European Audiovisual Observatory.

The headquarters of the Council of Europe, as well as its Court of Human Rights, are situated in Strasbourg, France. English and French are its two official languages. The Committee of Ministers, the PACE, and the Congress of the Council of Europe also use German and Italian for some of their work.

The flag of Europe or the European flag is an official symbol used by the Council of Europe (CoE) – the regional organization representing Europe, as well as the European Union (EU), the political union of, currently, 27 states. It consists of a circle of twelve five-pointed golden stars on a blue field.

The design was conceived in 1955, and officially adopted later that year by the Council of Europe as a symbol for the whole of Europe. The Council of Europe urged that it be adopted by other European organisations, and in 1985 the European Communities (EC) adopted it.

The EU also inherited the emblem's use when it was formed in 1993, being the successor organisation to the EC starting from 1 December 2009 (date of entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty). It has been in wide official use by the EC since the 1990s, but it has never been given official status in any of the EU's treaties. Its adoption as an official symbol of the EU was planned as part of the proposed 2004 European Constitution, which failed to be ratified in 2005.

Inherited, however, may be a rather euphemistic description of how the EC, resp. now EU, originally acquired the flag. One may rather say that EC, not in intention but in effect, usurped the design. The Council of Europe itself had lobbied for other European organisations to adopt the flag as a sign of European unity. The expansion of the flag's use hereby intended has, though, in its real-world effect, rather caused a restiction of its use. (People and institutions in) e.g. Switzerland or, since Brexit, GB no longer perceive the Europen flag as representing their own, albeit both countries being members of the Council of Europe. In general, public as much as institutional, perception the flag no longer represents the CoE, but exclusively the EU and its member countries. The ambiguity caused by the flag's association with various entirely distinct organisational bodies has so far led to various conflicts in European countries as to whether the flag should be allowed to be hoisted there or not, e.g. in Switzerland.In consequence, the Council of Europe has since introduced a new logo, showing a stylized lowercase letter e on the background of the flag, thus facilitating distinction between the different organizations by enhancing the own visual identity, however maintaining the flag as such in its original design.

The flag is used by different European organisations as well as by unified European sporting teams under the name of Team Europe.