13/10/2020 | Standing Committee
PACE has urged governments to avoid “one size fits all” responses to pandemics or other similar crises, and ensure they always act inclusively and take account of the diversity of society when shaping emergency measures in future. Approving a resolution based on a report by Petra Stienen...
13/10/2020 | Standing Committee
By adopting a resolution today, based on the report by Pierre-Alain Fridez (Switzerland, SOC) on the humanitarian consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for migrants and refugees, the Standing Committee, meeting by videoconference, said that these vulnerable groups were “doubly affected” by the...
12/10/2020 | Standing Committee
“In times of pandemic, human life and public health should be kept at the top of our priorities regardless of the problems in the economic activity and by trying also to minimize the negative consequences for democracy, the rule of law and human rights,” said Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, the Greek...
12/10/2020 | Standing Committee
OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria has appealed to the world’s nations not to stop the extra economic stimulus provided during the period of the COVID pandemic too soon. In an exchange of views by teleconference with members of the Parliamentary Assembly’s ‘enlarged’ Standing Committee, the OECD...
12/10/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Pieter Omtzigt (Netherlands, EPP/CD), the General Rapporteur on the Protection of Whistle-blowers for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), calls for a swift end to the persecution of the British oil-industry whistle-blower Jonathan Taylor, who in 2014 helped expose USD 275...
12/10/2020 | Standing Committee
The ‘enlarged’ Standing Committee, meeting today by videoconference, held a current affairs debate on the ‘Armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, failure of peaceful conflict resolution and a risk to regional stability’. Michael Aastrup Jensen (Denmark, ALDE) opened the debate and twenty...
12/10/2020 | Standing Committee
PACE is urging the European Union to rapidly resolve the “institutional deadlock” imposed by Malta over the definition of ‘illegal sports betting’ which is preventing the Union and its member States from ratifying a Council of Europe convention aimed at tackling the manipulation of sport...
12/10/2020 | Standing Committee
Member States must “optimise human rights protection in the implementation of drug control policies”, while adopting “a public health approach”, the PACE Standing Committee said today, meeting by videoconference. There is strong evidence suggesting that purely repressive policies have been...
09/10/2020 | President
On the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty (10 October), PACE President Rik Daems made the following statement: “To date more than two-thirds of countries worldwide, 142 countries, have abolished the death penalty in law or no longer apply it, whereas 56 countries continue to use...
09/10/2020 | Monitoring
Following yesterday’s adoption by the Venice Commission of its opinion on the amendments to the Georgian law on the Common Court with regard to the appointment of Supreme Court judges, the Parliamentary Assembly’s co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Georgia, Titus Corlatean (Romania, SOC) and...
09/10/2020 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Béatrice Fresko-Rolfo (Monaco, ALDE), PACE’s General Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and Baroness Doreen Massey (United Kingdom, SOC), rapporteur on addressing sexual violence against children, issued the following statement to mark the International Day of the Girl Child, 11 October: “25...
06/10/2020 | President
PACE President Rik Daems has again called for the drawing up of a protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights guaranteeing a right to a healthy environment, pointing out this would help push governments and parliaments to “go green”. Speaking at the “Human Rights for the Planet” virtual...