20/11/2020 | 10:32:16 Thank you, Mr President, Minister of State. Dear Michael, you have described the difficult situation of human rights that we have overall. But I believe that there are also opportunities to achieve a turnaround, perhaps now, against the background of the developments in the United States, and I believe that it would be a very encouraging situation for the Council of Europe if we did not lose Member States, but actually gained them. And I think Belarus could become the 48th Member State, of... 29/01/2020 | 18:38:08 Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, With the decision we took earlier, we have indeed embarked on a new path, and I would like to thank our colleagues from the PPE-DE for these wise and balanced words. I think, with all the differences we have, with all the difficulties there are and in very different positions; we should try — at least in the spirit of this new way of doing things, from this idea — to work together. Of course, that makes no sense if we were to end the path we took last year... 29/01/2020 | 17:50:25 Merci, Monsieur le President. Vielen Dank and thank you very much. For sure, I would like to thank all of you who contributed to the discussion for all your comments. Maybe I'm not allowed to say it, because it was on camera, but nobody acted against the recommendation of the Venice Commission because Mr VARAIKIS mentioned it. I just wanted to clarify that. For sure, we are not in easy times and what you describe is the reality of Europe and the reality we have to face. And we are in a... 29/01/2020 | 16:33:32 Distinguished President, Ladies and gentlemen, It is not easy if you sit there to reach this area here, but I'm here. The Council of Europe faces a lot of challenges, but it's not the Council of Europe alone. There are a lot of international organisations who have a lot of problems due to what we call a crisis of multilateralism. I think what we should always know is that it's not a crisis of the institutions. It's a crisis of some countries who would like to be members of an institution but... 28/01/2020 | 10:30:57 Thank you very much, Mister President. Dear colleagues, first, it's interesting to recognise we now speak in the name of the very honorable and traditional group of European Conservatives to defend the government of Poland. I would like to thank the rapporteurs for this important report, which we've had to wait a very long time for. It's not you but there were others who failed to present a report in time to act. We always have a discussion about the question of who's more responsible for... 03/10/2019 | 12:10:28 Madam President, Secretary-General, Dear judges, Human rights defenders, Staff of this great organisation, Dear Colleagues. "It happened, therefore it can happen again." This is a quote from Primo Levi, an Italian writer and survivor of the Holocaust. "It happened, therefore it can happen again." That was the motivation for a project of school pupils in my constituency, Waltrop. The title of the project was "Alertness Project." When I sat there and was introduced to the project, I realised... 03/10/2019 | 10:29:34 Madame President, Dear Colleagues, Today is an urgent debate and indeed an urgent debate not about migration. You can talk about it many times, but today it is not about migration. Incidentally, there has always been migration, as we can see in many reports we make on minority rights, on language, on labor migration. Today, it is simply the question and the debate over how we deal with people who drown in the Mediterranean, who drown miserably. Whether we try to reach out to these people and... 02/10/2019 | 12:12:20 Madame President, Ms Secretary General, Also from my group once again the warmest congratulations on your choice in this really –I do not know– fateful seventieth year. We are really in a phase where we can re-develop and re-deploy this organization. That is why, I think, it is a good opportunity to do that together. This starts now, first of all with this new procedure, which we have agreed upon together and where we now have to come to a credible mechanism in a reasonable period of time... 01/10/2019 | 13:10:33 Thank you, President. I would like to express my sincere thanks for the French Presidency of the Council of Europe. You have led this Council of Europe into a new era. Russia is back, but we have agreed that we will create a new mechanism to deal with the countries that do not follow the rules here. I can only encourage you to continue on this path consistently. I'd like to follow on to what Ms BAKOYANNIS has said. I think it is a disgrace that we in Europe are allowing people in the... 27/06/2019 | 16:58:46 Thank you very much Madam President. So on one thing although we have some things in common, on one thing we totally disagree. This is the question if what we do here in the Council of Europe is a punishment or it's a chance for countries to be better. So it's really not a punishment. If we really think it's a punishment to have a kind of monitoring or post-monitoring or whatever, then I don't know what we do as an organisation. Then we don't need to do our jobs. I just ask for the foreseen...