15/03/2022 | 11:05:49 Thank you, Madam President. Dear Colleagues, Our honourable colleague, Mr Piero FASSINO, said it with perfect words, with the restraint and intelligence that characterise him: we are facing a decision that is now unavoidable. Not to vote today for the exclusion or a notice of exclusion of the Russian Federation would be tantamount to giving a blank cheque to the leaders of the Kremlin for the abolition of all the rules governing our organisation; it would be a blank chequek for an unjust... 27/01/2022 | 11:36:56 Thank you, Mister President. Dear Colleagues, First of all, my thanks to the representatives of the different groups and to all the speakers who have supported this report. I am well aware of the shortcomings because, unfortunately, we cannot produce a comprehensive report on the Council of Europe by investigating all the situations. I want to say to Mr Ahmet YILDIZ that, yes, the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina deserves a real investigation, either like many other cases. I apologize in advance to... 27/01/2022 | 10:43:15 Thank you Mr President, Dear colleagues, Enforced disappearances are still a criminal practice, unfortunately common in the geographical area covered by the Council of Europe. Thousands of people are still missing in Ukraine as a result of the armed conflicts in the Donbass and the Russian occupation of Crimea. In Russia, particularly in the North Caucasus region, many cases of enforced disappearance have not been seriously investigated to date, despite hundreds of Strasbourg Court judgments... 26/01/2022 | 18:29:51 Madam President, Dear colleagues, First of all, I would like to congratulate Mr Jacques MAIRE very warmly for his report and his thorough investigation. I knew Mr Jacques MAIRE as a diplomat, I find him an investigator of great scope and I welcome the critical tone of his report. However, I would like to go further and be firmer as Russia, against the background of any opposition to the government, decided yesterday to put Alexei Navalny - and not only him - on the list of terrorists and... 30/09/2021 | 17:38:39 Ladies and gentlemen, The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime represents an important step forward in the fight against the exploitation of information technologies for criminal purposes. Sixty-six countries have already ratified it, including 21 that are not members of our Organization. It is an open convention, and that is something very important. All the member States of the Council of Europe have ratified it, with two exceptions: Ireland and the Russian Federation, which has not even... 30/09/2021 | 16:14:59 Thank you, Mr President. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say here that we must also look at this issue from another angle; one that is not always that of the rights and treaties that govern us. I want to say one thing: it is easy, sometimes, to talk about migration flows, including in a large country like France, when we are not at the borders of Europe, when we are not the first to come into contact. We cannot understand, sometimes, when we are in France or Germany, what has happened... 22/06/2021 | 09:14:36 Thank you, Mr President. I thank the rapporteur, Mr Roberto RAMPI, whom I greet fraternally for his excellent report. The report was excellent, Democracy is in danger. The Council of Europe had to be able to respond to the needs of the people of Europe and to the needs of the world. I apologise for this perhaps somewhat dramatic tone, but coming from a country where the elections held last Sunday in France saw an abstention rate of 67%, there is cause for concern. Yes, pluralist debate is... 22/04/2021 | 10:46:03 Thank you, Mr President. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by thanking Mr Jacques MAIRE for his report, which I praise for being both critical and very balanced, and I will continue along these lines. The arrest and detention of Alexei Navalny in January 2021 are in flagrant contradiction with the values that we defend in this Assembly. They are also in flagrant contradiction with the undertakings resulting from membership of the Council of Europe. They are also in contradiction... 21/04/2021 | 12:24:12 Thank you, Mr President. Ladies and gentlemen, Belarus is a blot on the map of Europe. Belarus is a sad blot on the map of Europe. It was the only country that had not signed the European Convention on Human Rights and was therefore not a member of the Council of Europe. It is also the only country that has not yet abolished the death penalty. It is a country, and the two reports that have been presented – and I should like to congratulate Lord David BLENCATHRA and my colleague Alexandra... 28/01/2021 | 12:47:07 Mr President, My dear colleagues, First of all, I would like to thank Mr Boriss CILEVIČS very warmly for his report, which gives us the opportunity to talk about this particularly important subject. It is a sensitive subject at least on two counts: first, because the apprehension by law enforcement agencies of people on ethnic grounds alone constitutes discrimination and goes against our values; it is also sensitive because, as the report points out, ethnic profiling can undermine the...