03/04/2023 | Election observation
Bulgaria’s 2 April early parliamentary elections were competitive and well-managed but, while the legal framework is adequate for holding democratic elections, frequent changes erode trust, undercut efficiency and create challenges to making timely preparations, international observers said in a...
03/04/2023 | Election observation
The second round of Montenegro’s presidential election was competitive and as in the first round candidates were able to campaign freely with fundamental freedoms respected, but the tone was increasingly negative and the gaps in the legal framework became ever more apparent, international...
31/03/2023 | President
PACE President Tiny Kox has pledged that the Parliamentary Assembly will do everything in its power to ensure accountability for the crimes committed during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, declaring: “Justice will be done and delivered, whatever it takes.” Speaking by teleconference at the...
29/03/2023 | Election observation
A 21-member delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), led by Andrej Hunko (Germany, UEL), will travel to Bulgaria from 31 March to 3 April 2023 to observe the conduct of the early parliamentary elections on 2 April, alongside observers from the OSCE’s Office for...
28/03/2023 | Parliamentary Support
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) organised a seminar on access to historic documents at the Albanian Parliament in Tirana on 31 March 2023. The seminar, organised by PACE in co-operation with the Parliament of Albania, brought together parliamentarians, experts or...
24/03/2023 | Monitoring
Claude Kern (France, ALDE) and Edite Estrela (Portugal, SOC), co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Georgia by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), are to make a fact-finding visit to the country from 27 to 29 March 2023. The visit will focus on recent developments...
23/03/2023 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
“’I was there!’... The metaverse has what we might call ’near adjacent perceptual proximity’. We know that virtual reality is not real, but we experience it directly all the same, and we tend to respond, both bodily and psychologically, as though it were real,” said Verity McIntosh of the British...
23/03/2023 | President
Tiny Kox, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), paid a working visit to France on 22 March 2023, during which he discussed the current challenges linked to the war of aggression waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and its consequences, as well as...
22/03/2023 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
A former prisoner who leaked videos of torture in Russian prisons, as well as the founder of a Russian human rights organisation and website which published this material, were among participants at a PACE parliamentary hearing on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in places...
22/03/2023 | Monitoring
The PACE Monitoring Committee today lauded San Marino for its “wide and impressive range of institutional consultation mechanisms and instruments of direct democracy” while expressing concern about the numerous reports that indicate that these consultation mechanisms are “not always used as...
22/03/2023 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights today expressed great concern by the humanitarian crisis unfolding due to the ongoing obstruction of the Lachin Corridor. It adopted the following statement: Statement by the Committee on Legal Affairs on the obstruction of the Lachin Corridor
22/03/2023 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
There has been an increase in the number of European Court of Human Rights judgments pending before the Committee of Ministers, from 5,231 at the end of 2019 to 6,256 on 1 March 2023, the PACE Legal Affairs Committee warned today. Having seen previous progress on reducing the backlog, it...