14/12/2018 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Stressing the essential role that parliaments can play in promoting the work of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the Legal Affairs Committee made a series of proposals to ensure better implementation of CPT recommendations by national authorities.
On the basis of the report by Damir Arnaut (Bosnia and Herzegovina, EPP/CD), adopted today in Paris, the committee invited the national parliaments to react promptly to CPT reports concerning their country, by holding their governments to account for the timely implementation of CPT recommendations. Parliaments should also ensure that implementation of CPT recommendations falls within the mandates of their structures for ensuring implementation of international legal obligations, the committee said.
The adopted draft resolution also proposed that the Legal Affairs Committee develop its practice of holding exchanges of views with the Chairperson of the delegation concerned whenever the CPT issues a public statement on a particular country, as well as a joint exchange of views with the Monitoring Committee on the CPT's annual report, and ad hoc thematic hearings.
In a recommendation to the Committee of Ministers, it reiterated its earlier call on the latter to discuss as a matter of urgency any CPT public statements.