26/04/2022 | 18:38:54 Madam Chair and Colleagues, I want to say thank you for the report, or at least a great part of it, but not quite all of it. I am aware that the rapporteur herself – and I thank her for the report – made it clear that there is a legislative thrust to much of it. There I have no quarrel at all, but she also mentioned in her introduction, the fact that she was seeking something that was holistic. I believe that element of its being holistic lacks one essential element, which is the voice of... 25/04/2022 | 18:48:20 Mister President and colleagues, so good to be here. This report simply has to be commended. It establishes the need for action and lays the ground for future work. It needs to be invested with a sense of the greatest urgency. Others have mentioned pieces of legislation in their parliament. In the United Kingdom, over the last three years, we've been giving our attention to a new bill, the Online Safety Bill, whose provisions include a number of actions intended to address this very cause... 15/03/2022 | 12:52:37 Dear Colleagues, It's a pleasure, well perhaps pleasure is the wrong word, but an honour to follow the speaker from Poland in order to be able to thank Poland for the generous and gracious way it has received so many of those fleeing from Ukraine at this critical time. Dear colleagues, I am a writer. Words are my métier, but I find I have no vocabulary rich enough to describe my horror at the catastrophe happening right now in Ukraine, nor the feelings I have for the people of Ukraine, and... 26/01/2022 | 12:21:40 Thank you very much indeed Chair. We are grateful indeed for the hard work that's brought this report to our attention. Sport is indeed a factor for human development and personal and collective wellbeing, as well as for social development and economic growth. Money has radically changed the aura and atmosphere of sport during my lifetime. Its driving forces now are often profit, prestige and a cult of celebrity. This leaves sport with a dangerous underside which harbours inequality, abuse... 30/09/2021 | 16:21:41 Mr Chairman and colleagues, It is a privilege to be standing here to contribute to this debate. I would like to begin by congratulating Ms Anne-Mari VIROLAINEN for this report, which I think is extremely well-balanced. It does set out the duties and responsibilities, both of those who are at the borders, being brought to the borders and those who bring them to the borders, on the one hand, and the infrastructural needs for receiving them in a due and dignified manner. It cannot be surprising... 24/06/2021 | 10:09:22 Thank you Mr President and colleagues. I'm a minister of religion and I worked with diasporas for the whole of my working life. Mr Paulo PISCO's report is most welcome. Time is short and a number of important points have already been made. I'd like to highlight three aspects of this question which might be added to the report. Firstly, there's the importance of remittances: money sent by members of diasporic communities to their families back home. According to Organisation for Economic Co... 22/06/2021 | 09:49:13 Dear Chair and colleagues, In the short time I've been involved in the work of the Council of Europe, I've come to see how the subject we are discussing is at the heart of everything we do and represent. As others have said, the very idea of democracy and the rule of law is underpinned by the existence of a free and independent press, this should be axiomatic and need no further elaboration. But the last things can be more complicated than that. Let me offer a story, a parable in the words of... 21/04/2021 | 11:51:18 Thank you very much, Mister President, and allow me with others to thank Lord David BLENCATHRA and Ms Alexandra LOUIS for their reports. The spirit, as well as the letter, of each of those reports is to be honoured. The Council of Europe strives not only to be critical of wrongdoing, which is of course proper, but also to offer a way to better days and the spirit of these reports is so admirable. I, like my dear friend, Lord George FOULKES, have adopted a prisoner in Belarus. He is just 17... 19/04/2021 | 18:56:52 Madam President, Ms Elvira KOVÁCS is to be congratulated on her report, which captures the essence of the question she addresses, and also provides sensible and effective steps for progress towards the ideal she describes. I have no hesitation at all in endorsing her proposal and in supporting her plea that the eight remaining nations who have not yet ratified this agreement should proceed to do so without further delay. She is quite right that ratification does not of itself guarantee... 28/01/2021 | 13:30:54 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) The title of this debate describes something that must surely be self-evident. Of course ethnic profiling is a matter of great concern and the only surprise is that we continue to need to say so. I read what Mr Boriss Cilevics has put before us with interest. Despite the fact that my only knowledge of how this Assembly works has been gained remotely, I’ve had no difficulty recognising Mr Cilevics as one of its significant characters. The...