11/10/2023 | 16:00:09 Mister President, honourable Members, On Saturday morning, we woke up to terrible news and horrible images of violence flaring up in the Middle East, again. Comparable to the acts of Daesh, Hamas' war of terror has spared no one. Families, women, and children were shot dead in the open street in broad daylight, and almost 300 people were massacred at a youth party. Israel was attacked from the air and the sea, and on land as well. Hamas' terrorism has shown once again that it knows no borders... 09/10/2023 | 16:24:59 Mister President, dear colleagues, Reality has again intervened in the programme of the Parliamentary Assembly autumn session. Israel is bleeding incomparably since 1973, the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago exactly: it is not an accident. This was a planned and very barbarically executed operation. We need to condemn the Hamas terrorism in the most explicit way. There is no justification of this brutality which we are experiencing. How about the peace process, dear colleagues. The Abraham Accords... 24/04/2023 | 15:30:47 Mister President, our Secretary Generals, Dear Mister Aleksander POCIEJ, Today we are all Warschauwers/Varsovians. I would like to mention three questions very briefly: the 4th Summit, the register, and Kosovo. The 4th Summit is approaching in three weeks. Our main aim is the renewal of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has been the engine behind this process. Congratulations to everybody who played a role in that. We must remain the engine in... 24/01/2023 | 19:33:14 Thank you, President, and thank you colleagues for the very stimulating discussion this afternoon and this evening. I listened to everybody. I do not know how many, but probably some of you did the same. It would be really very difficult to summarise what was said but I would like to underline what Mr Davor Ivo STIER quoted from Ms Baerbock quoting Adenauer, the soul of Europe is a formulation, which, I think, when we are entering the 75th anniversary of our existence as the Council of Europe... 23/01/2023 | 15:52:34 Thank you, President, I would like to congratulate you and all new office holders of this Assembly. I wish you a successful work to all of you in the coming year. I would like to congratulate also all national delegations. We have not had an easy challenge in front of us. We had to create an appropriate gender balance in the organisation. One third of all national delegations are now ladies and we have done it. I was doubtful about our ability to do this, but we have done it. So... 12/10/2022 | 17:36:06 Dear Mr John HOWELL, Dear colleagues, Dear rapporteurs, Dear Mr Eerik-Niiles KROSS, I also hope that you don't traffic human organs in Estonia. Electoral autocracy and such terms, it seems political witch-hunting continues. This report is ideologically biased, and does not reflect reality, constructivity, [and] fits into a series of reports named after people like Mr Rui Tavares, Ms Judith Sargentini and more recently, Ms Delbos-Corfield. This exercise goes against the interest of the... 11/10/2022 | 11:55:14 Thank you very much, Mr President. I would like to welcome also our Kosovo colleague who was able for the first time to address the plenary of the Parliamentary Assembly. The Western Balkans is really a European region becoming, like many times in the 20th century, more and more a playground of great power rivalry. Over the 19 years which have passed since the Thessaloniki Summit, the commitment to enlargement has been confirmed many times at the highest level. However, this length of time... 23/06/2022 | 11:02:30 Thank you, Mister Samad SEYIDOV. Dear Colleagues, The Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee) has presented a draft resolution to which 10 Amendments have been tabled. They will be taken in the order in which they appear in the Compendium. I remind you that the speeches and amendments are limited to 30 seconds. I understand that the Vice-Chairperson of the Monitoring Committee wishes to propose to the Assembly... 21/06/2022 | 18:08:41 Dear colleagues, We have had a long day I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Bogdan KLICH, the former defence minister of Poland, who played a very important role in discussing democratic security by preparing this report and I would like to express my gratitude to the Secretariat as well. Today, we had an interesting mix of a long debate that started in the morning and was interrupted by the high-level panel about the same subject. I am glad that we are having these practices and I was... 21/06/2022 | 10:04:51 Good morning, Mr President. Secretary General, Dear colleagues, The Russian Federation's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine has shaken the security architecture of Europe. We are coming close to the end of the Helsinki era, which started in 1975 and was fundamentally reinforced in the transition in 1988–89. There are tendencies which try to bring us back to the Yalta period – and that is what we do not want. That is against the intention of us to create, again, a security structure which...