15/05/2026 President
PACE President Petra Bayr has welcomed the political declaration on the European Convention on Human Rights which was adopted today by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers – and urged member states to “talk about us” to their citizens so that the Convention’s role in protecting them against arbitrary power is better understood.
In an opening intervention to the 135th session of the Committee of Ministers in the Moldovan capital Chișinău, the President said the declaration – which aims to set out a unified approach to migration in light of Convention rights – represented “46 states reaffirming, together, that the European Convention on Human Rights is not negotiable, that the Court is independent, that human rights are universal — not optional, not inconvenient, not tradeable.”
The Convention “lives and breathes” and should be able to evolve, the President pointed out – but only through principle, never through fear or populism. She urged states to do a better job of promoting Convention rights to their citizens, inviting them: “Carry one more thing out of this room: the duty to make your citizens understand what stands between them and arbitrary power.”
She also welcomed the commitments made by more than 20 states so far to support the Special Tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine: “Accountability is no longer a wish. It is a structure. Being built. Here. Now.”
