24/04/2026 | 10:46:07 Dear Madam President, Ladies and gentlemen, "Never again", that was the clear common intention, the declared common will when the Council of Europe was founded. Never again did we want to see dictatorship, terror, oppression, megalomania or war in Europe. Never again the Holocaust, never again the murder of minorities or political dissidents. Never again the horror that emanated from Europe. It was about a common Europe, but this time a free Europe. The fact that we had to fight for this... 23/04/2026 | 17:55:59 Dear Chair, dear colleagues, I would like to speak in German. In this day and age, programmes such as ChatGPT create promises and the feeling of being exposed to an unknown danger. This according to Mr Noam CHOMSKY, the American linguist, who wonders: can artificially created products think like humans, conceptually and with logical conclusions? And do such AI machines have similar rights to humans if they are conscious? Mr Noam CHOMSKY famously complained about the loss of intellectual... 27/01/2026 | 17:27:47 Dear Vice President, Dear colleagues, During the impressive Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony this morning, we heard the following question: "Are you doing what's right or what's comfortable?" This uncomfortable question was posed by the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Federation in Ukraine. Are you doing what's right or what's comfortable? The question hits the nail on the head, because in this war in Ukraine, it's not just about Ukraine and its neighbours who, as we heard this morning, fear... 26/01/2026 | 16:36:21 Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the international legal system is the foundation of an international order. The international legal system forms the foundation of an international order. It guarantees stability, predictability and peaceful co-existence between states. A matter, of course, to which we had become accustomed, especially in the Western constitutional states after the Second World War, and a matter, of course, that seemed to be established after the fall of the Berlin Wall... 02/10/2025 | 12:09:51 Mister President, Ladies and gentlemen, I dare say that there is no one in this Council who is not deeply concerned and upset about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. We are not in any way advocates of Benjamin NETANYAHU's government and its conduct of the war. But, ladies and gentlemen, we are also not a court that passes judgment. We are the ones who demand respect for international humanitarian law, call for human rights and name the misery. But if we do so in this way with such a report... 01/10/2025 | 19:05:38 Dear Mister President, colleagues, We are talking here about the opposition. Not the opposition, which in most constitutional states and democracies is part of a system of government in which the political forces change from time to time, in other words countries with a system of opposition and government. After elections, it can happen that the government becomes the opposition and vice versa. We are talking here about an opposition in a dictatorship. An opposition that cannot become the... 01/10/2025 | 16:39:40 Thank you President, colleagues, Thank you very much for this well-founded and well-researched report, which is urgently needed and hits the nerve of both the vulnerability of our democracies and their strengths. Why vulnerability? Demographic change is evident. The population is getting older and the proportion of older people in society as a whole is increasing. What does that mean for elections? The fact that the voices of older people are overriding those of young people, and the voices... 01/10/2025 | 11:25:46 Dear Mister President, dear colleagues, I would like to thank you for this excellent, thoroughly researched and well-founded report, which I have the honour of supporting on behalf of the Group of the European People's Party. However, please allow me to share a few basic thoughts on the relationship between autocrats and media professionals. Yes, journalists matter. Freedom matters. Democracy matters. Without free journalism, there is no democracy. Without free media, there is dull autocracy... 27/06/2025 | 10:15:59 Mr President, Dear colleagues, I would like to express my concern about the growing threat to democratic forces in Europe. The aim of the Council of Europe is to promote democracy and protect human rights and the rule of law in Europe. The Council of Europe was founded in response to one of the most terrible wars to have been waged in Europe by anti-freedom, autocratic, terrorist and racist forces. The Second World War was preceded by a sustained propaganda campaign trumpeting the need to... 29/01/2025 | 10:32:48 Dear Madam rapporteur, Thank you for this report and I support it wholeheartedly. "Never again" is how I saw myself in my youth. In my family, with parents who lived through the war, the war was omnipresent. Coming to terms with the madness of the Third Reich with 80 million deaths worldwide, the murder of political prisoners, the genocide of Jewish people, the targeted extermination of six million Jewish women, men and children sank into the collective consciousness. The horror was...