09/04/2025 | 16:03:57 Thank you, Mister President. First of all, my colleague and joint rapporteur Mr Stefan SCHENNACH sends his profuse apologies. He has been elected leader of his party group and has had to return to Austria to participate in a debate in Parliament. He is in complete agreement with this report. On Monday, the Assembly decided to hold an urgent debate on the detention of the mayor of Istanbul, Mr Ekrem İMAMOĞLU, and the state of democracy and human rights in Türkiye, and we are honoured to be... 28/01/2025 | 11:49:55 Thank you, Madam Chair. I congratulate the rapporteur on her valiant efforts here. But I regret that the rules-based international order she wishes for here no longer exists. First, there is no single international order. There are multiple international orders. The United Nations and the UN Charter provide a general foundation but there are a variety of multilateral but not global institutions that co-ordinate or regulate members' conduct, providing some limited rule-based order such as the... 27/01/2025 | 17:03:47 Thank you, Mister Chairman. Sorry about that; technology defeated me. I am speaking to you today as the Chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Network of Election Observers. Over the past year, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe carried out 10 pre-election and election observation missions in four member states: North Macedonia, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova, and Georgia, with 64 Assembly members from 28 countries taking part. Our longstanding... 03/10/2024 | 10:22:44 Mister MORRIS, I am delighted to see you in the chair for this important debate. This is an excellent report by Mr Knut ABRAHAM and very ably presented by my colleague Lord Richard KEEN. Of course, Vladimir PUTIN denies that the Holodomor ever happened. That's just another PUTIN lie, just as he says that Ukraine invaded Russia, not the other way around. As this excellent report makes clear, the Soviet Union always claimed that the famine was just an act of God affecting the whole of Russia... 02/10/2024 | 18:21:14 Is that working now? My apologies. Technical incompetence. It's a pleasure to support the report with my colleague, Mr Zsolt NÉMETH, his co-rapporteur, Mr Aleksandar NIKOLOSKI. It sets out some welcomed improvements, but highlights that some fundamental problems remain and have not been addressed. I first visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996 when I was on a special mission for the United Kingdom government in Mostar. Half the city was in ruins and I walked over thousands of empty rifle... 28/06/2024 | 10:14:18 The report is extensive and morally well intentioned. By "extensive", I mean it calls for human rights protections for a wide variety of things from growing socio-economic inequalities, public health emergencies, wars and conflicts, rapid technological advances, intergenerational inequality and a less anthropocentric view of the environment. I agree that preventing the loss of plant and animal species is vitally important. When a species is wiped out, it is gone forever, and one day that... 26/06/2024 | 11:44:19 Mister Chairman, these are excellent reports. First of all, on an international tribunal, this Council should move immediately to create one. In 1944, four countries, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and France, set up the Nuremberg tribunal. There was no precedent, no rules to follow, but they made their own and justice was done. That is a model we should follow since the rules of procedure can be replicated today. There will never be an international criminal court... 25/06/2024 | 11:37:37 Mister President. I thank the rapporteur Mr George PAPANDREOU for all the work he's put into this Report and for his good intentions to widen democracy. Nevertheless, I am deeply concerned that what he proposes will weaken the rights of elected members and give more power to unelected and single-issue pressure groups. Of course, we all want more people to take an interest in how their country is run and to participate by then voting for representatives. If you don't vote, then don't complain... 16/04/2024 | 15:41:55 Mister President, what an honour to follow the fantastic speech from Mr STEFANCHUK. Absolutely humbling, but also very telling. I'm pleased to speak in support of this report and I can congratulate the rapporteur. We all want to see Ukraine reconstructed, all the damage restored, and all victims compensated, and Russia made to pay for everything. But that will not happen until Russia is defeated. Ukraine will not be reconstructed, and no victims will be compensated if Russia wins. Indeed... 25/01/2024 | 10:33:01 Thank you, Mister Chairman. I congratulate the authors of these reports for the work they've done in drawing this terrible situation to our attention. It's difficult to understand the depth of suffering these children are enduring, and also the relatives of children who have been taken by the Russian regime. Let's just quickly look at the statistics to get an appreciation of the horror. Some 20 000 children forcibly deported to Russia and forced to become Russian. The Russian Children's...