20/04/2021 | 17:27:39 Thank you Madam President. Soon after I first joined the Council of Europe which was some time ago now, I was involved in a debate on behalf of my group in the hemicycle on the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. It is very sad for me to still be here still talking about the same conflict. You can argue about whether it is the same conflict or not, but essentially it is the the same conflict. The reason that is very sad is because I have many friends amongst the Azeri delegation and I... 20/04/2021 | 16:02:16 Mr President, I think if you listen to the earlier contributions to this debate you could have been forgiven for thinking that the rise of digital companies is entirely due to the pandemic. Of course it is not. It may have been enhanced by the pandemic, but it is not due to the rise of these companies during the pandemic. Clearly the other thing that I think, that it is important to stress this point, is that these companies produce products, produce services, that people like, that are of... 20/04/2021 | 09:19:13 Let me say at the beginning, the passports of this type need to be looked at from two angles. First, for international travel and secondly, for domestic usage in our own countries. The former -the international aspect of it- is largely outside our control, in that whatever we may want to do, if other countries want to see us have a passport, we will have to follow if we want to travel to those countries. This is no different to inoculation against yellow fever, for example, and I recall, in... 28/01/2021 | 11:52:43 Thank you, Mr President. Firstly, I would like to add my congratulations to the rapporteur. I think he has identified a subject that is very important and the one thing that stands out in the report is the request that we must strengthen what we do to prevent racial discrimination. And of course in this we are guided by two judgments from the European Court of Human Rights. The first is the case of Timishev v. Russia and the second is the case of Lingurar v. Romania. And looking through those... 27/01/2021 | 12:48:16 May I say a few words now, since I was unable to log on earlier? Thank you very much. I would like to thank everyone for this fruitful debate and I would like to join with other colleagues in thanking Ms Jennifer DE TEMMERMAN for this excellent and timely report, and Dr Tedros ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS for taking the time to be with us today. Indeed, the scientific research into vaccines against Covid-19 has been exceptional and enormous progress has already been achieved in the development of... 26/01/2021 | 18:27:26 Mister President, Many people have said that this report is very political. I'm not in the least bit surprised. Having worked with Sir Edward LEIGH in the British Parliament I have to say he is a consummate politician. I think it is appropriate that he has been responsible for producing this. I was struck by something one of the speakers earlier said that we don't actually want use this. Actually, we do want to use this. We want to use it to protect the values and the core business of the... 26/01/2021 | 09:21:35 Thank you very much, Mister President. There's been a lot of talk during the course of this week about what is a core part of the Council of Europe. I think, however we look at it, the European Court of Human Rights and the subject of Human Rights is a core part of our business. We cannot ignore that nor should we try to brush it under the carpet. It's interesting to see that the two States that have the largest number of cases before the European Court of Human Rights are Russia and Turkey... 25/01/2021 | 17:18:05 Thank you very much indeed, that's very kind of you. May I start by being equally kind? I would like to congratulate Mr Michael Aastrup JENSEN on being elected again as Chairman of the Monitoring Committee. I think he does a very good job there, and I think that what I would like to say is about the importance of monitoring. In a values organisation, it's absolutely essential that we monitor and that we monitor everyone. Monitoring has to be seen, not as a big stick that we take to beat a... 20/11/2020 | 17:12:14 Thank you, Mr President. I too would like to congratulate the rapporteur on his report. I think we are all in favour of academic freedom and I say that as somebody who was, in a former existence, a research fellow within a university. So I have experienced this from both sides. There are two points that I would like to make. The first one relates to the arguments against commercialisation. And I would just put down a marker on this, that I do accept the commercialisation can have a bad effect... 31/01/2020 | 12:39:10 Just very shortly, Mr President. I think I agree with Mr Tiny KOX that this is such an important debate that it would have been much better to have held it when the chamber was full. But that doesn't mean that I don't thank completely all of those who participated in this debate and who have made the debate very very interesting indeed. I would like to thank also the rapporteurs for their excellent work that we've seen in these reports and I think that the one thing that we should remember is...