28/09/2016 President
At the end of his official visit to Iceland (26-27 September), Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), praised the Icelandic authorities for the extent of their fulfillment of Council of Europe standards.
He also welcomed the authorities’ support for PACE's #NoHateNoFear initiative, which was presented on Monday 26 September during a meeting of the Assembly’s Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy in Reykjavik.
At the same time, the PACE President noted that there are still some Council of Europe conventions that Iceland could benefit from ratifying, including the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women, the Revised Social Charter and the Additional Protocol to the European Social Charter Providing for a System of Collective Complaints. “I encouraged the Icelandic authorities to examine the progress of ratification of these and other important instruments,” he said.
“During my official meetings I was also able to discuss a range of political issues including the migration and refugee crisis, the threat of terrorism and the rise of extremism and populist rhetoric. We agreed that Europe has to have a common vision in order to deal with these challenges and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, together with national parliaments, can play a central role in this regard,” he said.
Finally, President Agramunt also visited the Barnahus, a centre dealing with children who may have been victims of sexual abuse, and met there with Mr Bragi Guðbrandsson, who was at the origin of the Children’s House and a former Chairperson of the Lanzarote Committee. “I was very impressed by the work they do in order to help these children and by the child-friendly environment that I found there,” concluded Mr Agramunt.
During his official visit, the PACE President met with the President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, the Minister for Finance Bjarni Benediktsson, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lilja Dögg Alfreðsdóttir, and the Speaker of Parliament Einar K. Guðfinnsson, as well as members of the Icelandic delegation to PACE and representatives of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Althingi.