12/04/2011 | Session
PACE, meeting this week in plenary session in Strasbourg, today elected Helen Keller as judge to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with respect to Switzerland. Ms Keller, having obtained an absolute majority of votes cast, is elected a judge of the European Court of Human Rights for a term of office of 9 years starting on 4 October 2011.
12/04/2011 | Session
PACE, meeting this week in plenary session in Strasbourg, today elected Erik Møse as judge to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with respect to Norway. Mr Møse, having obtained an absolute majority of votes cast, is elected a judge of the European Court of Human Rights for a term of office of 9 years starting on 1 September 2011.
12/04/2011 | Session
In a resolution adopted today, on the basis of a report by Luca Volontè (Italy, EPP/CD), the PACE called on member states to base their poverty reduction strategies on human rights by ensuring, in particular, that people and communities who experience poverty have access to not only social rights but also civil, political, economic and cultural rights.
11/04/2011 | Session
Adopting the final agenda of its plenary Spring Session, the Assembly today decided to hold, on Thursday 14 April, an urgent debate on the large-scale arrival of irregular migrants, asylum seekers and refugees on Europe's southern shores and a current affairs debate on the situation in Northern Africa. The parliamentarians noted that Steingrímur Sigfússon, Minister of Finance of Iceland, will not intervene in the debate on over-indebtedness of states scheduled for this afternoon.
11/04/2011 | Session
“The current revolutions in the Arab world are a powerful proof that the values which the Council of Europe defends and promotes – human dignity, human rights, democracy and the rule of law – are universal. These values can empower even the weakest and most oppressed people and can defeat even the strongest dictatorships,” PACE President Mevlüt Cavusoglu said today in his opening speech of the PACE spring session in Strasbourg.
11/04/2011 | Session
The credentials of the national delegations to the PACE from Montenegro, San Marino and Serbia were approved today, on the opening day of the Assembly’s spring session, after all three submitted new delegations which include at least one woman Representative.
11/04/2011 | Session
At the end of a debate on the over-indebtedness of states and its consequences for democracy and for citizens, parliamentarians called on European governments to devise "graduated strategies for public debt stabilisation and subsequent reduction". At the same time, member states should ensure that they "contain the erosion in living standards and citizen’s socio-economic rights", by endeavouring to spread the effects of austerity measures fairly across the population and to spare vulnerable groups the weight of adjustments.
11/04/2011 | Session
Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland called on Delegates to the Assembly to play their part in the Council of Europe’s political reform to make the whole Organisation more politically relevant, effective and influential. He said that the Organisation was now quicker and more focused in its response to external and internal challenges facing Europe.
01/04/2011 | Session
A debate on the religious dimension of intercultural dialogue, on Tuesday 12 April, will be one of the highlights of the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which will take place in Strasbourg from 11 to 15 April 2011. Several prominent religious figures will take the floor, including Patriarch Daniel of Romania, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, Vatican, Professor Mehmet Görmez, Chairperson of the Presidency of Religious Affairs of Turkey, Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Russia, and Prelate Bernhard Felmberg, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany to the Federal Republic of Germany and the EU.
01/04/2011 | Session
PACE President Mevlüt Çavusoglu today expressed his distress after 27 irregular migrants were found off the coast of Tunisia, drowned in the Mediterranean. “Each death of a boat person is one too many”, he deplored. “The events this year in Tunisia and Egypt and now in Libya have brought about a new wave of desperate people, using desperate means to find a new life”, he said.
28/01/2011 | Session
In a text adopted today PACE called on member states to ratify and implement the European Social Charter (1961 and revised in 1996), this being the anniversary year where both the 50 years since the original charter was agreed and the 15 years since its revision will be celebrated.
28/01/2011 | Session
Inequalities in access to health education, information and preventive care still exist, the Assembly warned today. The well educated part of the population enjoys easy access to the resources allocated whilst disadvantaged groups experience greater difficulties. Following the proposals by the rapporteur (Liliane Maury-Pasquier, Switzerland, SOC), the Assembly called on European governments to evaluate their preventive health care strategies, paying renewed attention to the social determinants of health.