26/06/2019 | 18:12:27 Dear President, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, Freedom of speech and freedom of the media, respect for the rule of law and prevention of impunity: these are the essential pillars of our democracy. When a journalist who reports on government corruption is assassinated, when the suspected killers are not put on trial, and the masterminds are not identified when allegations of corruption in the entourage of powerful prime ministers go unchecked, then something is going badly wrong. I was... 26/06/2019 | 15:46:39 Thank you Madam Chair. I am speaking on behalf of the EPP Group. To be fair, we do think differently on whether we should have adopted the Ms Petra De SUTTER's report in our group. For once we allow the Russian delegation to be part here. We expect them to observe the international rules. That means that we firmly believe that Russia occupying part of Ukraine, the Donbass, and Crimea, part of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and part of Moldova is not keeping to its international... 25/06/2019 | 11:09:57 Thank you, Mr Vice-President and thanks for all the work being done on the progress report. I have a question for the Rapporteur, who was also chairperson of the Rules Committee. At the beginning of each session, each of us has to sign that we agree to the values of the Council of Europe. Those values are not for nothing in international law because they protect mostly the smaller countries against the big countries. One of the values I thought this assembly was built on is a territorial... 24/06/2019 | 16:41:14 Thank you. And thanks to Madam De SUTTER for all the work she's been putting in a report which, as a number of speakers have told us, brings us to a very difficult position as an assembly. This report is indeed about Russia. And we are a rule-based institution that is different from other international institutions. Rule one: do not occupy part of another Member State. Rule two: make sure you implement the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. So don't approve any laws which allow... 22/01/2019 | 18:42:35 I thank Mr Gutiérrez and Ms Thorhildur Sunna ÆVARSDÓTTIR for an excellent report and an excellent summary of what is going on. As my colleague from the Group of the Unified European Left said, article 25 of the Cairo Declaration puts Sharia Law above everything else and makes it the unique source of interpretation. Someone who believes it is the unique source of interpretation is clearly at odds with the European Convention on Human Rights. We often talk about relatively minor infringements... 22/01/2019 | 17:07:02 I join those who have spoken so far in saying that this is an excellent report. It is very important that in this Assembly, when things are not resolved – and the Magnitsky case is not yet resolved – we keep coming back to it until it is. It is quite a shameful case; it is shameful to put on trial someone who was killed in custody. That simple fact should be enough, as should the fact that it has taken more than five years for the Russian Federation to be put in the dock to explain what...