Keen followers of European affairs might have noticed that, though the UK’s influence over the EU might have been slipping during the play-out of the eurozone crisis, its influence has increased - for six months at least - over that other European body, the Council of Europe. That is because, like the EU, the Council of Europe has a rotating chairmanship, and it is the UK’s turn from November 2011 to May 2012. (We have followed Ukraine, and we hand over to Albania. Clever readers will spot the alphabetical order, since we come at the bottom of the list of countries.) Our influence over the Council of Europe is heightened by the fact that the new president of the European Court of Human Rights is also a UK nominee, Sir Nicolas Bratza.

This is a lucky coincidence, but a serious question arises as to the consequences of a particular country chairing or presiding over an international institution. Is it an opportunity shamelessly to promote national interests? Within the CCBE, we have a convention that our presidency members effectively lose their nationality on joining the presidency, so that decisions are taken for the overall good of our 42 member bars, and the one million European lawyers that we represent through them.

But sometimes the ghost of another model emerges in other international bodies: where the presidency is the opportunity to promote national interests as fast and for as long as the presidency lasts. Such a model is foreign to our interests, and can only work - if it can ever work - if every member has an equal shot at being president and if… (too many other conditions need to be fulfilled for it ever to work properly).

If you look at the declared aims of the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe, as stated by foreign secretary William Hague, our senior representative to the body during this period, you will see that the overarching theme will be the promotion and protection of human rights, with a particular focus on reform of the European Court of Human Rights and strengthening implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Well, that is a surprise! You may know that there has been a running debate, particularly in the Conservative Party, about the activist nature of the European court, and the way it interferes with our good old British rights (for instance, in the way we want to deprive prisoners of the right to vote). So the UK is taking advantage of its chairmanship to push for one of its bugbears to be resolved.

There are serious problems with the European Court of Human Rights - the incredible and justice-denying backlog of cases, for instance - and so I hope that this is an instance of national interests overlapping with a grave institution-wide problem screaming for resolution. That can be good in international bodies: that the national energy derived from a local controversy drives the institution to resolve a larger problem whose solution has so far eluded it. The UK cannot in any case insist on its own way, since the Council of Europe, like most international organisations, operates through democratic agreement. The chair can bring energy and focus to a problem, but not force through a particular answer.

The balance between national interests and group interests in an international setting is fascinating to observe. Too heavy an obsession with national interests will undermine the national case, no matter how it is dressed up, since it will be obvious to all where the country is coming from, making others resist the argument more. An interesting example arose within the last few days. I was copied in on an article from the Guardian, circulated between continental lawyers.

This included the well-known argument - made publicly by a former lord chancellor a few years ago - that the UK should resist EU efforts towards a single European contract law, not because of arguments related to the common good of businesses and citizens around Europe, but because it would adversely affect the incomes of English lawyers, who benefit from the current dominance of English contract law.

As the Guardian article put it: ‘A single European contract law regime represents a serious threat to this country’s European legal hegemony.’ The continental lawyers commented one to the other along the lines of ‘Ha! Now we know what all the UK’s grand intellectual arguments are really all about!’

This balance between the national and the supra-national focuses on a central element in the crisis playing out daily in the eurozone, which is the role of the nation state. The EU - in line with other international organisations - is an effort to reach beyond the nation state, to build a different structure where sovereignty is to some extent pooled. Many people hate that with a passion, although they should be reminded that the history of the nation state has endless ugly aspects. Some of the worst excesses of human behaviour have occurred under the protection of a nation state. Efforts to build something better should not be constantly scorned.

It is obvious that, if every country in an international organisation just follows its national interests, without regard to the greater public good, then the existence of international organisations is more or less pointless. Joining such a body means taking decisions that benefit everyone and not just yourself. Of course - as with the UK and the Council of Europe - the ideal is where the personal and the institutional coincide.

The participation of the UK in structures like the EU and the Council of Europe is, among other things, a useful corrective to remind us that there are other people, and other values out there. We are obliged to remember there is a public good beyond our own, and learn to balance the personal with the general benefit.

Jonathan Goldsmith is secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents around a million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies. He blogs weekly for the Gazette on European affairs