22/04/2026 | 18:29:10 Thank you, Madam President. My speech is boring because I represent the Legal Committee and I can't really say what I would like to say on this topic. But nonetheless, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur, Ms Gala VELDHOEN, on her report and remind the report is titled “Towards the universal abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances”. We talked today mostly about Israel, but this report is much more than that. It was unanimously adopted by the Committee on Legal Affairs and... 20/04/2026 | 12:12:08 Thank you, Madam President. I will try to keep it short since we're talking about progress and the progress report, four points on things that we have and have not made progress on. First, probably the most important issue this body is working on is the International Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The Council of Europe signed the treaty with Ukraine last June. There were 33 countries who were in the core group drafting it. By now, only 19 countries have joined. I mean... 26/01/2026 | 16:26:54 Thank you, Madam President. 'Safeguarding the international system of justice'. Of course, the topic stems from the presumption that this system still exists. And I do the same; I think that it partially does. But the system of international justice, of course, is not just an abstract legal construct. It's a system that depends – besides conventions and legal texts – on political courage, institutional integrity and moral clarity. I'm glad to hear from the previous speakers that I'm not alone... 02/10/2025 | 10:16:12 Thank you, Mister President. Dear colleagues, Thank you, Mr Iulian BULAI, for bringing up this topic. It's obviously important for all of us. You know, we from the Baltic States have been a little bit puzzled about how Europe is struggling with the Russian threat, as if it's something new. It's nothing new. It has been around for a very long time. Maybe we are just a little bit more aware of it now. So what should we do about it? My father had a very simple and clear teaching about it. He... 01/10/2025 | 19:26:25 Mister President, thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for participating. I will be very short. As we heard, a lot of what was said today was, in essence, about trust. Can we trust starting this dialogue with the Russian democratic forces? Some of us don't, some of us do. For the doubters, I sometimes bring this example, talking about this. Imagine that you are in London in 1943, and there are Brits and French and Poles, maybe Americans, and they're creating an organisation, and they're... 01/10/2025 | 18:40:06 Dear President, Dear colleagues, Two and a half years ago, in March 2022, this Assembly took one of the most important decisions in its modern history. In the face of brutal, full-scale aggression - Russia's aggression against Ukraine - we acted quickly, with unity and with determination. We expelled the Russian Federation from our organisation, thus making it clear that the Council of Europe cannot harbour an aggressor state. A state basically hijacked by a gang of criminals. The state that... 30/09/2025 | 19:13:50 Thank you very much. I enjoyed this debate quite a bit. I think it's the first time ever anyone has accused me of being woke, which is an interesting feeling. I do not really want to start to defend the report, but I'll give you one example. One of you, Ms Katalin CSÖBÖR, I think, said that we do not acknowledge that the EU Justice Scoreboard recognises the progress in judicial effectiveness. And I'll just read you one paragraph. I am quoting our report. The judicial system in Hungary is... 30/09/2025 | 18:03:43 Dear colleagues, Today, we present the key findings of the Monitoring Committee's report on Hungary, which reflects our ongoing responsibility to ensure that every member state upholds the fundamental values of the Council of Europe: democracy, the rule of law and human rights. Hungary has been under a full monitoring procedure since 2022 due to what this Assembly called "systemic concerns". While in this report we acknowledge some progress – most notably, recent judicial reforms aligned with... 26/06/2025 | 17:50:32 Thank you, Mister President. And dear colleagues, My speech will not be for the faint-hearted, but neither is the situation in Georgia today. And my question to you is: what else needs to happen in Georgia before we actually stand up and do something about it? I would, of course, also like to ask you to call the events with the right words. We use the word "democratic backsliding". It's not democratic backsliding. What we are watching in real time is a Russian-style – probably also Russia... 24/06/2025 | 18:10:24 Yes, thank you. Did I lose 20 seconds? No. I want to start by thanking all the Ukrainians for their help. And actually they are doing the main job. I mean, we are thanking each other, but it's actually a minute thing that we are doing. Thanks to the Ukrainians we are still here today and talking about it. So this was a quite depressing debate. We have been debating in a similar manner for the last three years. We repeat, describe what's going on in Ukraine, it's horrific. And then at the same...