The General Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the Council of Europe of 2 September 1949 (ETS No. 2) sets out the regulations applying to parliamentarians in Part V, Articles 13 to 15 (Representatives to the Consultative Assembly). It states, among other things, that no administrative or other restrictions shall be imposed on the free movement to and from the place of meeting of representatives to the Assembly.
At the Assembly’s recent meeting of the Standing Committee in Stockholm, a number of members were stopped by the police while they were on their way to the meeting. The reason was that another high-level meeting – the International Compact with Iraq (ICI) Annual Review Conference – was being held in parallel. The problem is not that some parliamentarians were stopped in accordance with Article 24 of Swedish police law. My concern is that the police officers on duty were not familiar with the General Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the Council of Europe mentioned above.
Mr Lindblad asks the Committee of Ministers what measures does it intend to take to ensure that information about the General Agreement is included in the training of police officers in member countries?