18/09/2020 | President
PACE President Rik Daems will have an audience with Pope Francis on 21 September. In addition, in the framework of a working visit, the PACE President will hold the next day bilateral meetings with the Speakers of both chambers of the Italian Parliament, Maria Elisabetta Casellati, President of...
15/09/2020 | President
The PACE President announced today that the October 2020 part-session of the Assembly will be replaced by a meeting of the Standing Committee – which acts in the name of the Assembly - on 12-13 October, to be continued on 22-23 October. “This meeting will be ‘enlarged’ to allow all PACE members...
14/09/2020 | President
“Strong and healthy democratic societies rely and thrive on equality, freedom, good governance, dignity, inclusiveness,” said Rik Daems, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), speaking on the eve of the International Day of Democracy (15 September). “We are...
08/09/2020 | President
Speaking during an exchange of views on Belarus, organised by the Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, PACE President Rik Daems stressed that “a solution will only come from the Belarusian people”. In a pressing plea for non-violence, he called for an immediate end to unlawful detentions...
27/08/2020 | President
In a joint statement by the Alternate Foreign Minister of Greece, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, President of the Committee of Ministers, Rik Daems, President of the Parliamentary Assembly and Marija Pejčinović Burić, Secretary General, the three Council of Europe leaders called on the Belarussian...
18/08/2020 | President
"Events in Belarus demonstrate the paramount importance of the values the Council of Europe stands for. By actively defending their fundamental freedoms, the people of Belarus have chosen the path of democratic change. Therefore, an all-inclusive national political process is urgently needed to...
10/08/2020 | President
Following the Presidential election in Belarus, PACE President Rik Daems made the following statement: “I have been following closely the Presidential election in Belarus as well as the events of last night following the closing of the vote – I deeply regret that this election was far from being...
27/07/2020 | President
PACE President Rik Daems today made the following statement, jointly with Béatrice Fresko-Rolfo, General Rapporteur on violence against women, and Pieter Omtzigt (Netherlands, EPP/CD) and Azadeh Rojhan Gustafsson (Sweden, SOC), co-rapporteurs on the monitoring of Poland: “The announcement by...
21/07/2020 | President
Rik Daems, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), has urged European governments to do more to crack down on online hate, in a statement to mark the European Day for the Victims of Hate Crime (22 July). “Online hate is getting worse and worse,” said the President...
15/07/2020 | President
PACE President Rik Daems has appealed to European governments, currently negotiating a 750 billion euro recovery fund in the context of Europe's pandemic crisis, to dedicate part of it to a common vaccination programme. "Such a recovery plan must include a joint vaccination programme, co...
08/07/2020 | President
The European Convention on Human Rights, as well as many other Council of Europe legal instruments that form our Convention system, set clear “red lines” that cannot be crossed even in times of severe public health emergency, PACE President Rik Daems said today. “We have to protect the lives of...
24/06/2020 | President
Strasbourg, 24.06.2020 – “I am extremely worried by the persistent deadlock in the Middle East peace process. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians remains a major source of instability for the whole region,” said Rik Daems, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of...