PACE winter session: ‘Faked pandemics, a threat to health’

12/01/2010 Session

The committee will be holding a public hearing on the same subject on Tuesday 26 January at 8.30 am, attended by representatives of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European pharmaceutical industry and experts on the subject.

Other highlights of the session will be the debates on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the situation in the Middle East and action against trafficking in human beings.

With Lluís Maria de Puig coming to the end of his term of office, the Assembly is also due to elect a new President. The only candidate to date is Mevlüt Çavusoglu (Turkey, EDG).

Prominent personalities due to address the Assembly include George A. Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, Franco Frattini, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Italy, Micheline Calmy-Rey, Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and Chairperson of the Committee of Ministers of the “47”, and Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

The other topics on the agenda include, in particular, respect for media freedom, judicial corruption, the detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, and the functioning of democratic institutions in Albania and in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

* * *

Draft agenda

• Opening of the first part of the 2010 Ordinary Session
• Election of the President and Vice-Presidents of the Assembly     
• Progress report of the Bureau of the Assembly and the Standing Committee
• Communication from the Committee of Ministers to the Parliamentary Assembly presented by Micheline Calmy-Rey, Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, Chairperson of the Committee of Ministers
• Communication from Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe  

• Election of a judge to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Italy
• The situation in the Middle East, and statements by invited personalities (tbc)
• Address by George A. Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece
• Address by Franco Frattini, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Italy
• The functioning of democratic institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Action against trafficking in human beings: promoting the Council of Europe convention
• Lobbying in a democratic society (European code of conduct on lobbying)

• Election of a judge to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Italy (possible second round)
• Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity
• Judicial corruption
• Freedom of religion and other human rights for non-Muslim minorities in Turkey and for the Muslim minority in Thrace (Eastern Greece)
• Respect for media freedom, and statement by Miklós Haraszti, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media
• Thresholds and other features of electoral systems which have an impact on representativity of national parliaments in Council of Europe member states
• Increasing women's representation in politics through the electoral system

• Possible urgent debate on ’Faked pandemics, a threat to health’
• Rethinking creative rights for the Internet age
• The detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants in Europe
• Solving property issues of refugees and displaced persons, and statement by Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch, Former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina
• The functioning of democratic institutions in Albania

• Fifteen years since the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action
• Biodiversity and climate change
• Draft Protocol amending the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters
• Euro-Mediterranean region: call for a Council of Europe strategy