24/01/2023 | 17:15:22 Mr President, colleagues, I sincerely applaud the hard work of our rapporteur and the draft report and the recommendation that we have now on our table. It took a number of years to advance with the idea that was proposed initially by Mr Michele NICOLETTI. Now we are very close to having this historical fourth Summit of the Council of Europe. The idea of adopting a political declaration and an action plan is normal, it's an important goal. But, I would like to underline one thing. And I will... 13/10/2022 | 19:29:08 Thank you, President and colleagues. First of all, and I'm doing this objectively. I'd like to thank and to express my appreciations for the hard work and the objective work of both rapporteurs, and for what was said about the positive dimension and about the critics. And we are taking very seriously also the other part of critics. I think it's most probably the most balanced, objective, and positive good report on Romania in the last many, many years here in the Council of Europe. It... 11/10/2022 | 10:31:27 Hello president, colleagues, First of all I would like to congratulate our rapporteur Mr George PAPANDREOU for his excellent report. Definitely I will share and support his conclusions. Secondly, just a few political comments. The first one is the following: all the time the EU enlargement process was a huge asset for the European Union. It was the case with the Central Eastern former communist countries; it is the case now with some of the Eastern partners: Ukraine, Republic of Moldova, and... 10/10/2022 | 12:11:40 Yes. Thank you, Mr President. Colleagues, I would like first of all to thank the rapporteur of the Assembly, and of course, the leader of the Socialist Group Mr Frank SCHWABE for introducing a very well structured report, progress report. We share the conclusions. On behalf of the Socialist Group I will focus specifically on two items: the fourth summit and the new European Political Community. First of all, on the fourth summit, the summit it is about the tragedy generated by the Russian... 23/06/2022 | 12:11:45 Thank you very much, Mister President. Your Majesty, Colleagues, First of all I would like to thank all the colleagues who contributed. Their contributions were extremely important for our debate and for the conclusion of our debate today. I want especially to thank also, from a human point of view, for the empathy, for the emotions, for the heart that you expressed speaking about this tragedy. My first comment on the substance is related to the question that I received related to the data... 23/06/2022 | 11:15:56 Mister President, Colleagues, First of all I, myself, would like to welcome some of the families of the Dutch victims of the flight MH17, who are honouring us in being present today with us in the Parliamentary Assembly. Colleagues, The report before you is about a human tragedy, which took the lives of 298 people, including 198 Dutch citizens, 17 nationalities all in all, including one Romanian, who were on board flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. They died an atrocious... 22/06/2022 | 11:00:22 Thank you, Madam President. Colleagues, I would like from the beginning to congratulate our rapporteur, Ms Petra BAYR, for this really excellent work and for the conclusions that proposed that I totally share. Unfortunately, antisemitism, denial of Holocaust, discrimination and hate speech these are realities, very concerning realities, and, fortunately, these are topical issues currently. Looking on different national and international sources of information, and especially on the European... 28/04/2022 | 18:46:14 Yes, Mister President. Maybe I will take also 1 extra minute or so from Mr Claude KERN's allowed time. The first comment. The issue of the extreme polarisation, the issue of hate speech and the issue of political culture that was mentioned by one of the colleagues that took the floor. Is true that during the years this remains the key challenge. And from this challenge, there are several negative consequences, extremely negative consequences. I can testify the fact that during the years... 28/04/2022 | 17:57:04 Mister President, Colleagues, Georgia has continued to make marked progress in honouring its obligations and commitments to the Council of Europe during the reporting period, continuing a tradition that was also noted in previous reports. At the same time as outlined in the report, a number of concerns and shortcomings remain to be addressed before the country can move to a post-monitoring dialogue. Nevertheless, the progress made should be recognised. Therefore, in the report, we have... 27/04/2022 | 10:48:33 Thank you President and colleagues. First of all, I would like to express a word of respect for our Ukrainian colleagues, women and men, for their courage and the way how they fight and support the interests of their country and their nation. Secondly, I want to express a clear and strong support for the adoption of the report proposed by our rapporteur, Mr Frank SCHWABE. This report, while expressing once again the support for the integrity, sovereignty and independent status of Ukraine (and...