24/01/2023 | 18:29:21 Thank you, Chair and let me thank also the rapporteur. I have signed some amendments just to improve further the text but it is already a very good one. Now, I was very glad earlier today to hear from the German Foreign Minister how she quoted Konrad Adenauer when he said that "the Council of Europe is the soul of Europe". And I was glad to hear that from a politician that does not come from a Christian democratic party or tradition. Now it could be argued that Konrad Adenauer would not... 23/01/2023 | 16:26:44 Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me also thank Mr Pieter OMTZIGT for this report, as well as Mr Stefan SCHENNACH for preparing the opinion. As explained in the report, there is conclusive evidence that Daesh has committed genocidal acts against the Yazidis as well as against Christians and non-Sunni Muslim minorities. This evidence has been collected and reported by the UN Commission of inquiry on Syria as well as the UN investigative team to promote accountability for crimes committed... 11/10/2022 | 11:13:07 Dear Colleagues, I hope that we all still remember the concept of Europe: whole, free, and at peace. That was the ordering concept after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it has been challenged. It has been challenged by the neoliberal strategy of the Russian Federation, by the geopolitical concept of the Russian world. We saw that applied already in 2008 in Georgia and then afterwards and today in Ukraine. That was a challenge to the concept of Europe: whole, free, and at peace. That has... 22/06/2022 | 11:17:20 Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me begin by thanking Ms Petra BAYR for her work and for this report. I will continue where my colleague Mr Domagoj HAJDUKOVIĆ stopped, or at least, he opened the question for education, which I think is a critical issue, and of course, is one of the main topics of the report, and rightly so. As we in Croatia are preparing for taking the rotating presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, I think this is in a way a privilege but for us is mainly... 21/06/2022 | 18:43:09 Thank you, Chair. Let me start by thanking Ms Thórhildur Sunna ÆVARSDÓTTIR and Mr Frank SCHWABE for their work. Both your reports describe the systematic violations of human rights by the authorities of the Russian Federation. Yesterday, at the group meeting of the European People's Party we hosted Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of the imprisoned Russian activist and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, as well as Sergei Davidis, the head of the political prisoner programme of the human rights... 27/04/2022 | 12:33:21 Thank you, Chair. Mister President, thank you for your speech. Now Europe, Mister President, is currently facing multiple threats, of course, the most important and grave one is Putin's war of aggression. We are also seeing the challenge posed by authoritarian tendencies around the globe also in our area of the Council of Europe. We see also the problem that inflation is causing to European economies and societies. Now, Mister President, you are a leader who managed to gather very diverse and... 15/03/2022 | 11:15:51 Thank you, Madam Chair. Dear colleagues, this war of aggression against Ukraine launched by the Russian Federation it's a defining moment for all of us. It's a defining moment for Europe and for the Council of Europe because, let's make no mistake about it, this war of aggression against Ukraine is also an aggression against the principles upon which this Council of Europe was founded as an organisation, as part of the architecture of peace after World War II that tried to replace the logics... 27/01/2022 | 10:54:37 Thank you, Mr Chairman. And let me on behalf of the Group of the European People's Party thank the rapporteur for his committed work on ending enforced disappearances. Our group fully shares the view that enforced disappearances violate essential human rights and that no circumstances can justify this deplorable crime. In particular, we firmly condemn the systematic practice of enforced disappearances by authoritarian regimes, a practice that constitutes a crime against humanity under... 30/09/2021 | 09:36:43 Thank you, Madam Chair, Dear colleagues, The first thing that we have to realise about the situation in Afghanistan is that the strategic decision of the United States to withdraw its troops probably has less to do with Afghanistan itself, and far more to do with China and the containment measures envisaged by Washington and carried out by US institutions in a continuing effort, regardless of the fact of who is in the White House. Since resources are limited, even for the United States, they... 29/01/2020 | 11:26:19 Thank you, Mr Chairman. And thank you to everyone who participated in this debate. Many mentioned rights of non-discrimination on religious ground and this is indeed a legal concept which is in no contradiction with reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodation in this sense is just a practical way on how to implement and how to facilitate employers to observe the right of no discrimination on religious grounds. Of course that in the amendments that clarification, and we have about nine...