28/06/2019 | 11:11:52 Dear colleagues, Thank you so much for your participation in the debate and your engagement in this serious issue. The war in Syria is a war that has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis in our times. It has been a humanitarian catastrophe of immense proportion with atrocious crimes, forced displacement, use of chemical weapons, torture and attacks against civilians that have been commonplace. It has been fought by countless militant groups within Syria representing various... 28/06/2019 | 10:06:51 Thank you Chair. Dear colleagues. We know that the war in Syria has been the source of many issues that we have been debating on here in this Assembly for the recent year. We have witnessed, extremely, many people fleeing the situation in Syria and that has also been the case that we've been dealing with especially when it comes to migration issues here in the Assembly. Today we are debating on this report, The Situation in Syria: prospects for a political solution? The report by Ms Theodora... 27/06/2019 | 17:02:45 Thank you. I shall now put the amendment to the vote. The vote is open. ... The vote is now closed. I call for the result to be displayed. The amendment is rejected by two votes. We will now proceed to vote on the draft resolution contained in document 14904. The vote is open. … The vote is closed. I call for the result. The draft resolution is amended and adopted - I'm sorry adopted. Thank you. Then we conclude this debate and I want to thank all the participants to that debate. The next... 27/06/2019 | 16:56:00 Merci, Madame DAMYANOVA and dear colleagues, I just want to remind you that it's now nearly 5 o'clock. The ballot to elect the judge to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Germany is about to close. Anyone who still wishes to vote should go immediately to the area behind the President's Chair. The counting of votes will take place under the supervision of the tellers. I invite Mr Constantinos EFSTATHIOU, Mr John HOWELL, Mr Rafael HUSEYNOV and Mr Ali ŞAHİN to go at once to meet... 27/06/2019 | 16:04:54 Dear Colleagues, I want to thank you sincerely for a very good debate. It's good to hear the profound solidarity to stop violence and exploitation of migrant children, that we have felt here in the hemicycle today. And that is a good reminder of why we are here. It was necessary to be reminded that we are still faced with unacceptable situations for migrant children and unaccompanied children. Like Mr Paul GAVAN mentioned, on the situation of detention centres on the Hungarian borders. And Mr... 27/06/2019 | 10:20:19 Dear Madam President, dear colleagues, We are now discussing and debating an issue that touches the most vulnerable groups in our society: migrant children that are faced with violence. I would like to start this presentation by sharing my impressions from the visit to the La Purisima centre for unaccompanied minors in Melilla. Melilla is a Spanish city on the African continent, which has a direct boarder with Morocco. Every day around 14 000 people are crossing the border in Melilla... 26/06/2019 | 18:37:11 Madam Chair, I want to thank the Rapporteur for this urgent and important report. And it's grim and dim reading here that we have on what really has not happened in Malta after the assassination of Daphne Galizia. I just want to underline a few things in the report that the rule of law and Malta is seriously undermined by the extreme weakness of its system of checks and balances. A series of major scandals in Malta in recent years linked to fundamental weaknesses in the rule of law in Malta... 25/06/2019 | 17:26:18 Thank you, Madam President. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to speak on this very important issue in our Assembly as I've done before and many of us have done before. The Istanbul Convention represents an ambitious legal framework for protecting women from domestic violence and I am very proud that Iceland has ratified the Istanbul Convention. As is stated in the Resolution, domestic violence is a widespread Human rights violation representing deep-rooted inequality between men and... 24/06/2019 | 17:18:26 Thank you Madam President. Dear Colleagues. The report we are debating and voting on today is a good and thorough report. But we stand before a difficult decision today. We are deciding on changes to our Rules of procedure that will narrow our possibilities to sanction delegations in response to the country's behavior. In some respects this can be said to weaken the Parliamentary Assembly. We need to face this choice with open eyes and weigh the negatives of such action carefully against the... 12/04/2019 | 12:31:08 I will speak on trials in Madrid. Today, there are now 12 people on trial in Madrid. Those people are leaders of Catalonia’s failed 2017 independence bid and are facing charges including rebellion and sedition. If they are convicted, some could face up to 25 years in prison. The semi-autonomous region of Catalonia held an independence referendum on 1 October 2017 and declared its independence from Spain weeks later. Spanish authorities had declared the Catalan vote illegal, and the national...