29/01/2025 | 19:57:08 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Mister President, Today I wish to address what I view as a critical oversimplification of the complex challenges posed by demographic ageing in Europe. It is with great interest that I have read the report prepared by our Rapporteur Ms. Odamur, which discusses the potential of immigration to help address the challenges of an ageing population in Europe alongside other economic considerations. However, I must express my concerns regarding... 29/01/2025 | 10:24:21 Thank you, Madam President, To my mind, there are two fundamental elements in our lives, there is time, which forms our history as communities and societies, and there is physical space, underlying geography, forming as it does the "stage", as it were, where events, or history, is constantly being played out. This is why history, like geography, were considered such important school subjects for an earlier generation, especially after two devastating World Wars. The thought was that, even... 28/01/2025 | 20:01:41 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Madam President, Our rapporteur Mr Andrea Orlando in his highly interesting report raises the question of whether – and if so how seriously – mercenaries and private military companies around the world pose a threat to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. I would say there is indeed such a challenge, and that we may even have to broaden our definition of such groups than we have done up to now – but I’ll get back to this later... 03/10/2024 | 10:44:24 Mister President, I am most grateful to our rapporteur Mr Knut ABRAHAM for having prepared such a clearly written and factual report on one of the worst crimes on our continent committed in the last century, namely the deliberate starving to death of an estimated 10 million Ukrainians in the early 1930s. For two years in a row, the harvest in Ukraine was confiscated by Stalin’s henchmen, and then either destroyed or taken to other parts of the Soviet Union. Not even the seeds foreseen for the... 02/10/2024 | 18:54:51 Thank you very much. And the debate is closed. The Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee) has presented a draft resolution [Doc. 16039] to which two amendments have been tabled. I remind you that speeches on amendments are limited to 30 seconds. Any amendment which has been unanimously approved by the Committee seized for report shall not be put to the vote in plenary and shall be declared as definitively... 02/10/2024 | 18:03:28 Thank you very much. The debate is closed. The Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons has presented a draft resolution and a draft recommendation [Doc. 16050], to which no amendments have been tabled. We will now proceed to vote on the draft resolution contained in Doc. 16050. A simple majority is required. The vote is open. And the vote is closed. I call for the result to be displayed. And the draft resolution in Document 16050 is adopted unanimously. Congratulations. We... 01/10/2024 | 20:37:42 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Mr President, The situation in Iran is, to put it mildly, really bad. Individual freedoms have suffered badly, not least for women. Desperate popular protests are being crushed with extreme violence by the ruthless servants of the illegitimate Islamic dictatorship. The country’s theocratic leadership uses the Islamic Revolutionary Guard to attack the broader population when they protest against runaway inflation and the regime’s apparent... 01/10/2024 | 20:37:29 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Mr President, At its session last January, the Assembly voted to deprive the Azerbaijani delegation of its voting rights for the year 2024. Seventy-six Assembly members - a clear majority - voted in favor of this proposal. Ironically, me and the other seventy-five members, were declared persona non grata in Azerbaijan. It must be hard to find a better way for the Azeri regime to show us that our decision was right. The reason for such... 27/06/2024 | 11:45:11 Thank you, Madam President. Our rapporteur [inaudible..] record time written a very good report on a highly important and complicated subject, namely what needs to be done following the displacement of over 10 million Ukrainians from their homes, whether abroad, in Europe or beyond, or in Ukraine itself. This comes following Russia's unprovoked and utterly cruel and brutal invasion of the country. Not since the years following the Second World War has Europe experienced something on this... 27/06/2024 | 11:00:32 Dear Mister President, I was among those many who, in the spring, pushed for the new Georgian legislation on so-called "foreign influence" to be urgently debated in our midst. And here we are doing just that, and I commend the Assembly on its speed of reaction. As the title of our debate implies, the "foreign influence" legislation represents a real threat to Georgian democracy and in fact it represents a threat to European democracy. In brief, it focuses on any non-governmental organisations...