20/09/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
PACE’s Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee will hold in Bratislava on 22 September an exchange of views on a memorandum on Assistance to ill persons at the end of life by Dick Marty (Switzerland, LDR). Following a plenary debate in April 2004 on Mr Marty’s earlier report on Euthanasia, the Assembly voted to refer it back to the committee, recommending “a new text which brings together the widely diverging approaches expressed during the debate”. The committee will also discuss two petitions, one on Dutch-speakers’ and the other on French-speakers’ right to medical care in Brussels and surrounding regions. The committee will also be informed by Michael Hancock (United Kingdom, LDR) of his recent visit to Bulgaria to follow up his report on Improving the lot of abandoned children in institutions.
16/09/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Final agreement within the World Trade Organisation on the so-called “Doha development agenda” is urgently needed if the quickening process of globalisation is to benefit all the world’s population, PACE’s Economic Affairs Committee said in a draft report approved yesterday. The report, by Kimmo Sasi (Finland, EPP/CD), welcomed the interim agreement reached by WTO members in Geneva in July 2004. WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi will take part in the plenary debate on the report, provisionally scheduled for Monday 4 October 2004.
09/09/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Europe should not “play with fire”, parliamentarians were told at a hearing on the question of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) organised by the Assembly’s Environment Committee in Paris yesterday. Several Assembly members considered that the potential risks were much harder to pin down than the benefits. The committee had invited a number of experts to the hearing to share their views on the risks and benefits of “crop engineering” for a report being prepared by Wolfgang Wodarg (Germany, SOC).
05/07/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Michael Hancock (United Kingdom, LDR), who is assessing the follow-up to the Assembly’s April 2003 recommendation on “Improving the lot of abandoned children in institutions” for the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, will visit Bulgaria from 24 to 27 August. Accompanied by Bulgarian Assembly member Darinka Stantcheva, he is due to visit a number of orphanages and day-care centres in Sofia as well as meeting government ministers and other authorities responsible for childrens’ matters and childrens’ NGOs.
23/06/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Parliamentary Assembly today called on European governments to institute a total, Europe-wide ban on the corporal punishment of children, enforced in national legislation. "It is a shame that the smallest and most fragile of Europe's citizens should have to wait until last to have their protection guaranteed," said Helena Bargholtz (Sweden, LDR), presenting her report. While all 45 member states of the Council of Europe have banned corporal punishment in schools, only a minority have formally prohibited it in the family and in all other settings – as they are required to do under international agreements, she pointed out. In its recommendation, the Assembly called for Europe to be made a “corporal-punishment-free zone” for children.
22/06/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Assembly sees recent EU enlargement – which brought eight of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 'countries of operation' into the Union – as a vindication of the EBRD’s major contribution to European integration. It called for the Bank to put a growing emphasis on the remaining non-EU states, in particular those which are less developed, and commend it on the link it makes between progress in human rights, democracy and the rule of law, on the one hand, and economic development on the other. However, the Assembly deplored developments in countries at the bottom of the Bank’s 'constitutional liberalism index', such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus.
21/06/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The procedure of joining the European Union’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) promises to be anything but easy for the new EU members, placing great strain on their currency stability and public finances. According to the Assembly, it is “vital that the terms for joining the EMU be made sufficiently flexible”. For instance, by having the permitted range of fluctuation in the Exchange Rate Mechanism be the wider range used at the currency’s launch in 1999. Adopting the rapporteur's (Robert Walter, UK, EDG) proposals on The Euro and the Greater Europe, the Assembly stressed the importance of ensuring observance of the Stability and Growth Act. “As long as the Pact exists in its current form, it should be respected. However, urgent thought must be given to ways of improving the Pact, both to make it better heeded and to improve its functioning”, it said.
11/06/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Assembly’s Economic Affairs Committee, meeting at the headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, is to approve its annual report on “The OECD and the world economy” prepared by Abdülkadir Ateş (Turkey, SOC). The report is due to be debated at the autumn session by the so-called Enlarged Assembly, which has served as the OECD’s parliamentary forum since 1962 and which includes parliamentarians from OECD countries not members of the Council of Europe.
14/05/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Daniel Goulet (France, LDR), who is preparing a report for the Assembly’s Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs on “the potential adverse consequences of the Oil Pool D-6 operation”, visits Kaliningrad,Vilnius and Nida from 19 to 20 May to meet Russian and Lithuanian authorities as well as local environmental organisations. The D-6 operation is a planned oil extraction platform in the Baltic close to the Curonian Spit, a Unesco World Heritage listed site which straddles both Lithuanian and Russian territory.
30/04/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Debating the future of social security in Europe on the last day of its spring session, the Assembly acknowledged that there is no single model which will fit all European countries, but recalled the basic principles which should apply to all – enshrined in key Council of Europe texts. Presenting his report, former French Health Minister Claude Evin (France, SOC) said: “Social security has a cost, but it can cost still more – economically, socially and politically – to be without social security.”
16/04/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Abdülkadir Ateş (Turkey, SOC), who is preparing the annual report on “the OECD and the world economy” for the Assembly’s Committee on Economic Affairs and Development, visits on 23 April the organisation’s headquarters for briefings with senior officials. The report is due to be debated by the Enlarged Assembly – involving parliamentarians from OECD countries not in the Council of Europe – during the Assembly’s October 2004 session.
02/04/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Michael Hancock (United Kingdom, SOC) visits Romania to assess progress in implementing the recommendations in his report on “improving the lot of abandoned children in institutions”. The Assembly’s recommendation, adopted in April 2003, calls for the closure of large, isolated or dilapidated childrens’ institutions and the restoration of childrens’ family ties where possible. Mr Hancock will meet Romanian Health Minister Ovidiu Brînzan as well as other authorities concerned with childrens’ rights.