25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee (*) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which brings together around 60 of the Assembly’s members, met in Reykjavik on Friday 25 November 2022. After the opening of the meeting by PACE President Tiny Kox, Alþingi Speaker Birgir Ármannsson gave a...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee, meeting today in Reykjavik, is worried about the shortages of medical supplies that have increased dramatically before, during and since the Covid-19 pandemic, due to stockpiling, restrictions on exports, closed borders, and lockdowns. The parliamentarians denounced a...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
The PACE Standing Committee, meeting today in Reykjavik, underlined the importance of ensuring that the key institutions and mechanisms of democracy function properly during health emergencies, with particular attention to parliaments, elections, local democracy and civil society organisations...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
Laws aimed at combating Covid “might be used to further restrict the rights and fundamental freedoms of civil society actors”, PACE has warned. Approving a resolution based on the report by Margreet De Boer (Netherlands, SOC), the Assembly said Covid restrictions had had a “deleterious effect” on...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
Europe can learn “useful lessons” from the experience of prisons during the Covid pandemic, continuing to use alternatives to detention to reduce the prison population and ease overcrowding, according to PACE. In a resolution based on a report by Givi Mikanadze (Georgia, SOC), the Assembly said...
25/11/2022 | Women@PACE
In the framework of the Standing Committee meeting in Reykjavik, the ‘Women@PACE’ group organised a working breakfast together with all women members of the Icelandic Parliament. After opening remarks by Women@PACE Bureau member Petra Stienen, the Prime Minister of Iceland and Minister for...
25/11/2022 | Political Affairs and Democracy
The Sub-Committee on External Relations will visit the United Nations from 28 to 30 November on the occasion of the 77th Session of the General Assembly. Meetings are scheduled notably with Csaba Kőrösi, President of the General Assembly, Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary-General, Administrator of...
24/11/2022 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“Parliamentarians must join with international and civil society organisations to reject the backlash and backsliding that are stopping progress in ending gender-based violence, which affects women and girls around the world the most,” said PACE’s General Rapporteur on Violence against Women and...
23/11/2022 | Parliamentary support
Staff from both chambers of the Parliament of Morocco are to take part in a study visit to the Italian Parliament on 28 and 29 November 2022 on the theme of opening Parliament to citizens. The visit, organised jointly by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Italian...
22/11/2022 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
Speaking at a conference in Vilnius on the role of public service media in upholding democracy, Mogens Jensen (Denmark, SOC) recalled that media freedom and freedom of information were under increasing threat and pressure, especially in countries with hardening political regimes, and in the...
18/11/2022 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“In the past year, hatred, violence and suicide have tragically cut short the lives of hundreds of trans people across the globe,” said the Assembly’s General rapporteur on the rights of LGBTI people, Christophe Lacroix (Belgium, SOC), on the occasion of the Trans Day of Remembrance, 20 November...
17/11/2022 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Stadium, a powerful new short film which aims to raise awareness of sexual violence against children in sport, has been launched by PACE to coincide with the start of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Launched on the eve of the European Day on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation...