06/02/2007 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
At the end of a two-day visit to Moldova (5-6 February), Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, who is preparing a report for PACE on the disappearance of new-born babies for illegal adoption, made the following statement:"I have had a positive visit, involving fruitful exchanges of view with interlocutors from all parts of society including the authorities, for which I am grateful. All share my aim of protecting new-born children from illegal adoption, a complex and hidden crime. However, before coming to any final conclusions concerning the situation here, I need to gather additional information, including from other countries. I intend to leave any further comment until my final report is made public later this year."
01/02/2007 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold (Switzerland, SOC), who is preparing a report for PACE on the disappearance of new-born babies for illegal adoption, will visit Moldova from 4 to 6 February 2007. She will seek to investigate allegations of newspaper advertisements targeting unmarried mothers who might be willing to sell their children for illegal adoption, and to look into the possible illegal trafficking of babies.
15/12/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
At a meeting yesterday in Paris, PACE's Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs urged the governments of the organisation’s 46 member states to take action against modern-day enslavement and trafficking of seasonal agricultural workers. “Situations vary between countries, but all point to the same findings: the active population looking for work is, in part, constituted illegally and lastingly so as to create a real labour market and a casual, exploited workforce to match, often under outright conditions of modern-day bondage,” said John Dupraz (Switzerland, ALDE), PACE rapporteur on Agriculture and illegal employment in Europe.
13/12/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The annual meeting of the PACE Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee with the Unicef Innocenti Research Centre was held in Florence on 11 December. It was chaired by Marcel Glesener (Luxembourg, EPP/CD) and commemorated Unicef’s 60th anniversary. Marta Santos Pais, Director of the Innocenti Centre, presented a detailed report on the State of the World’s Children 2007, stressing the links and interaction between children’s rights and women’s rights. If women and mothers had more rights and power in the world, children would be better and more effectively protected, she said.
08/12/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee of the PACE will be holding a joint meeting with UNICEF at the Innocenti Research Centre in Florence on 11 December on the subject of children’s rights. The meeting will also provide the opportunity to celebrate UNICEF’s 60th anniversary. The Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, and the Director of the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Marta Santos Pais, will address the participants at the opening of the meeting.
30/11/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
PACE’s Economic Affairs Committee yesterday called for the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to take a vote on the Organisation’s 2007 budget if no compromise can be reached between divergent positions. "In order to allow the Council of Europe to continue to function normally in 2007… the Committee of Ministers must now face up to its responsibilities," the committee said in a statement, failing which it would demand an urgent debate at the Assembly’s January plenary session. The committee urged government representatives to "do more to facilitate, rather than hamper by its foot-dragging attitude year after year, the work of the Council of Europe".
06/11/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Organised by PACE’s Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee on 9 November, this hearing will look at how the revised European Social Charter is being implemented, particularly as regards new labour standards and minimum wages. Participants include representatives of the International Labour Organisation and of the European Trade Unions Confederation as well as Council of Europe bodies charged with monitoring commitments on social rights. Meeting the following day, the committee is also due to approve opinions on reports concerning the presence of Turkish migrant workers in Europe and the date-rape drugs.
25/09/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
More than 200 parliamentarians and farmers’ representatives from across Greater Europe and the Mediterranean will gather in Strasbourg on 28 and 29 September 2006 to discuss “building a Euro-Mediterranean agricultural and rural policy in a global context” at the 2nd Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Agriculture. The conference is organised jointly by PACE and the European Parliament, who will each host the conference in their debating chambers on consecutive days, together with the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) and the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (ICAMAS).
18/09/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“Individual nations will have different approaches on how to reconcile econonomic growth and social protection in an era of globalisation, but the maximum impact is likely where the public sector works, and invests alongside and in co-operation with the private sector, and other social partners,” PACE rapporteur Tony Lloyd (United Kingdom, SOC) said in Paris today at the end of a hearing organised by the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development on this issue.
14/09/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
According to PACE rapporteur on the situation of elderly persons in Europe, Jean-Marie Bockel (France, SOC), Europe is likely to lose nearly 55 million economically active persons by 2050, making a ratio of one retired person for each worker. During a conference in Paris on 13 September organised by the Assembly’s Committee on Social, Health and Family Affairs under the patronage of the French Senate, several proposals were made for ways of countering this phenomenon. These include measures to encourage immigration, increased fertility and, in particular, employment prospects for senior citizens.
13/09/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
French Senate President Christian Poncelet has called for the vicious circle of exclusion of the elderly to be broken and for an end to the social, physical and financial hardship they face. "While we are pleased to note that the French, like their European neighbours, are living longer, we also have to look at the other side of the coin: difficulty in paying pensions for demographic reasons, insecurity, inequality of status and treatment, unemployment among the elderly, inadequate provision for widows, and so forth," he said. Mr Poncelet was speaking at a conference in Paris on the situation of elderly persons in Europe, organised by PACE's Social Affairs Committee under the patronage of the French Senate.
11/09/2006 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
A conference on the situation of elderly persons in Europe, taking place in the French Senate in Paris on Wednesday 13 September, will deal with the aspirations and rights of the elderly on the one hand and the elderly under threat of inequalities and exclusion on the other. Organised by the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee of the PACE under the patronage of the French Senate, the conference will be opened by Christian Poncelet, President of the Senate and Bernard Schreiner, Chair of the French delegation to PACE. It will bring together parliamentarians from the 46 Council of Europe member states and government and NGO experts.