28/01/2021 | 10:56:49 Thank you, thank you very much, Mr Chair. We do live in a post-truth world. Fake news undermines the essence of the freedom of expression. As the great Hannah Arendt was writing in her seminal work Truth and Politics, freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute. It's obvious that we cannot have a meaningful discussion if the reality itself is disputed. And of course other challenges to freedom exist. Hate speech – free... 27/01/2021 | 12:36:17 Thank you, Mr Chair. The amendment supports the central idea of the rapporteur, but also of the general director of WHO, that the vaccine is a global public good. So the amendment wants to support that, first for reasons of equity, the vaccine should reach all people in all countries, even the poorest ones. Another rationale for the amendment is to check the profiteering practices of Big Pharma. We have seen recently, for instance, that they have not respected their commitment regarding... 25/01/2021 | 12:50:15 Thank you Mr President. First of all my best wishes to you personally and to all our colleagues for a much better New Year. I think dear Mr President that we have as an Assembly showed good reflexes in the challenging environment of the pandemic. Not only we have adapted our functioning to the new difficult dire circumstances, but we have also responded timely to the substantive challenges of the pandemic to our democratic values and principles. We have reacted to the new dangers regarding... 20/11/2020 | 12:14:30 Thank you, Rick. As has already been said by the other colleagues, the Athens Declaration is a very useful document, not because it's a revolutionary one, but exactly because it summarises the basic stance of our Assembly, not just vis-à-vis the pandemic, but also vis-à-vis the more general problems of protection and defence of human rights. It stands in defence of human rights, multilateralism and also international legality. And it is also very important that it stresses that national... 20/11/2020 | 10:22:53 Mr Minister, dear Michael, first of all I would like to comment on your position regarding the adhesion of the European Union to the European Convention of Human Rights. And my first question will be: how would you think also annexation to the European Social Charter? You have recently ratified the revised charter, social inequalities have risen during the pandemic. I think that it is a very necessary step for the European Union. My second question is that you have very rightly said that... 30/01/2020 | 15:51:49 Thank you, Chair. Dear colleagues, There is a triangle of instability in the Middle East. Libya, Syria, and Iraq are part of the theater of an extended proxy war: a new, bloodier variant of the great game of the 19th century. Especially Libya represents a massive political failure of the international community. First of all a failure of the EU foreign policy. The absence of a clear strategy and the inability to reach a common position reflect conflicting visions of strategic influence, but... 30/01/2020 | 11:28:13 Thank you, thank you, Mr President. The rapporteur very rightly underscored that in Azerbaijan and regarding the political prisoners, we're facing a structural and systemic problem. There have been prisoners when Azerbaijan acceded to the Council of Europe and there are continuous, very important number of leaders of the opposition, journalists, activists, who are detained arbitrarily, even with a single administrative decision, and are convicted even in the aftermath of a number of important... 28/01/2020 | 10:24:01 Thank you. Thank you Mr Chair. I fully agree with the rapporteur and the previous speakers on the gravity of the situation. The cumulative impact of recent reforms undermines the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Poland. A similar breach of the rule of law directly affects Europe as a whole. It cannot be considered as an internal affair of Poland. Even more worrisome is the fact that this attack on the judiciary coincides with new legislation limiting basic freedoms, such... 03/10/2019 | 12:32:30 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) We are speaking today about the life of families, mothers and children drowned every year in the Mediterranean. Whether there are in their majority refugees or immigrants is a false question. Factually speaking, International Amnesty still considers the flows to be comprised mainly by refugees. Still, the question is mute, because it would not change our obligations towards these people, since rescue at sea is an obligation by international... 02/10/2019 | 19:51:18 Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to commend on behalf of our group, the two rapporteurs, but above all, to praise and commend North Macedonia on all its efforts to adapt to the European acquis of the rule of law and of human rights. And, more especially, to the courage it has shown in signing the Prespa Agreement. I had the privilege to be the acting Foreign Minister who defended the ratification of the treaty at the Greek Parliament, which I can assure you was not, even in the my country, an...