02/10/2007 | Session
At the end of a debate on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the Assembly called on the Sudanese Government to fully and immediately comply with the UN’s demands, end its support for violence against civilians and promote humanitarian work. The international community, parliamentarians said, should enforce arms sanctions, restart peace negotiations, and use the deployment of an effective peace-keeping force – as recently voted by the UN Security Council – to protect civilians.
02/10/2007 | Session
“Recently, the Council of Europe has made some new, unprecedented steps towards building bridges with religious communities. In our sight it is the long-awaited response to many calls of religious leaders,” Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and all Russian said before the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in Strasbourg today.
01/10/2007 | Session
Parliamentarians today warned that proposals to set up transit and processing centres for migrants outside the EU raised “serious human rights concerns” and should be tried only as part of a comprehensive approach involving countries of origin, transit and destination. Such centres should be set up first within the EU before extending the experiment to the rest of Europe or beyond, they said. They also urged European states to examine the option of regularisation programmes and to learn from the experience of past programmes. Regularisation programmes, they said should only be considered as one part of an overall strategy for tackling irregular migration. The Assembly also congratulated the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on its work and called for greater co-operation between it and the Council of Europe.
01/10/2007 | Session
"Cooperation is an important key to success in migration management. Migration as a transnational phenomenon cannot be managed effectively in the long term through national measures alone, so inter-state cooperation is essential", today said Brunson McKinley, Director General of International Organization for Migration, adressing the Assembly. "IOM strongly supports bilateral and multilateral initiatives geared towards creating broader consensus on migration practices, approaches and systems", he said.
01/10/2007 | Session
Addressing the Assembly today, Filip Vujanovic, President of Montenegro, said Council of Europe membership has given his country "a fresh and highly important encouragement for further integration into European structures." He declared: "Montenegro is willing to fulfill all assumed commitments in a diligent and persistent manner for the benefit of our citizens and the region as a whole."
01/10/2007 | Session
The Assembly today adopted its order for the Autumn 2007 Session (Strasbourg, 1-5 October). The newly-elected Turkish President Abdullah Gül will address the PACE on 3 October. Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and all Russia (2 October), Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic (1 October) and Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica (2 October) are also due to address the Assembly. The parliametarians decided not to hold an urgent debate on "The political implications of the proposed US/NATO rocket shield".
29/06/2007 | Session
Religious groups must tolerate criticism and debate about their activities, provided it does not amount to gratuitious insult, but on the other hand hate speech – inciting discrimination or violence against people of a particular religion – should be penalised, PACE said today in a recommendation. Meanwhile blasphemy laws – which often result from the dominant position of one particular religion – should be reviewed.
25/06/2007 | Session
Adopting the agenda for its 2007 summer session, PACE today decided to change the date of its general debate on inter-cultural and interreligious dialogue (which will take place on Friday 29 June instead of Tuesday 26) and to refer back to committee one of the three reports which had been down for that debate (the dangers of creationism in education, Guy Lengagne, France, SOC). The reports on the image of women in advertising and on Europe's social dimension, scheduled for Friday, were brought forward to Tuesday 26. One of the high points of the session will be the debate on secret detentions in Europe (Wednesday 27), based on the latest report by Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE).
22/06/2007 | Session
The Assembly debates this morning in Strasbourg Dick Marty's (Switzerland, ALDE) second report on secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states. The report alleges a series of partly secret decisions among NATO allies in October 2001 which provided the basic framework for illegal CIA activities in Europe.
06/06/2007 | Session
A second report by Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE) on secret detentions and transfers of detainees, and a special debate on intercultural and inter-religious dialogue – covering topics such as blasphemy and the dangers of creationism in education – are among highlights of the Parliamentary Assembly’s summer plenary session (25-29 June 2007). Invited speakers include Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering, ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte and the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. Also on the draft agenda: combating anti-Semitism, a first monitoring report concerning Monaco, and the image of women in advertising.
20/04/2007 | Session
The Assembly today called on the governments of the Council of Europe member States to make provision for an international legal instrument, in the form of a convention, designed to introduce a new offence relating to pharmaceutical crime. During a debate on the quality of medicines in Europe, the parliamentarians warned about a phenomenon that kills and can be associated with a form of organised crime. Counterfeit medicines affect 10% of the world medicines market and the losses are estimated at about 500 billion euros a year. The report, by Bernard Marquet (Monaco, ALDE), highlights the alarming increase in counterfeit medicines, which now account for 10% of the world market, and cost states 500 billion euros in lost taxes every year. It calls for an international convention, defining a new offence – pharmaceutical crime – and making it possible to arrest, prosecute and punish the producers of counterfeit or adulterated medicines.
04/04/2007 | Session
A special debate on the state of human rights and democracy in Europe – with contributions from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the heads of the main Council of Europe human rights monitoring mechanisms, as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – will be a highlight of the spring plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which takes place from 16 to 20 April 2007 in Strasbourg. Also due for debate, on Tuesday 17 April, is Montenegro’s accession to the Council of Europe, with the participation of the Speaker of the Montenegrin Parliament Ranko Krivokapić. Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is invited to address the Assembly on the same day at noon.