27/01/2014 | Session
After the first round of the election for the President of the Assembly, Anne Brasseur obtained 165 votes and Robert Walter, 125 votes. Ms Brasseur is elected President of the Parliamentary Assembly.
27/01/2014 | Session
When adopting its final agenda at the opening of the Winter Session 2014, PACE decided to hold an urgent debate on Thursday on ‘The functioning of democratic institutions in Ukraine’.
27/01/2014 | Parliamentary support
A second seminar on this issue, aimed at the staff of national parliaments, was held on 16-17 January 2014 in Strasbourg. It was organised in cooperation with the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights and financed by the Human Rights Trust Fund. The programme included a presentation of...
26/01/2014 | Session
The Assembly is due to elect a new President on the first day of its winter plenary session, Monday 27 January. Two candidatures have been received: Anne Brasseur (Luxembourg, ALDE) and Robert Walter (United Kingdom, NI).
24/01/2014 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“I am deeply disturbed and saddened by the sudden death of Isa Sahmarli, the chairman of the Azerbaijan Free LGBT group, who took his own life on 22 January in Baku,” said PACE General Rapporteur on the rights of LGBT people.
23/01/2014 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
A hearing on the circumcision of young boys is to take place on 28 January on the margins of the plenary session. It will bring together medical experts, including from the Jewish and Muslim communities, and parliamentarians.
23/01/2014 | Monitoring
Mailis Reps and Marietta de Pourbaix-Lundin have condemned the escalating violence at the Euro-maidan protest, which has already resulted in at least three fatalities, two reportedly as a result of police bullets.
20/01/2014 | Prizes
The Parliamentary Assembly today issued a call for nominations for the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, which will be awarded for the second consecutive year on 29 September next in Strasbourg.
20/01/2014 | Monitoring
Following their visit to Tbilisi from 13 to 16 January 2014, the co-rapporteurs for Georgia, Michael Aastrup Jensen (Denmark, ALDE) and Boriss Cilevics (Latvia, SOC), welcomed the improved political climate after the Presidential elections that was evident during their visit. At the same time...
17/01/2014 | Monitoring
The co-rapporteurs for Ukraine expressed their deep concern about the anti-protest laws and laws in particular restricting the work of Civil Society organisations and free flow of information adopted by the Verkhovna Rada.
17/01/2014 | Monitoring
Pedro Agramunt and Joseph Debono Grech, co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Azerbaijan, will visit the country to further assess the honouring of its obligations and commitments to the Council of Europe.
17/01/2014 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty expressed her outrage at the cruel and inhuman execution of Denis McGuire in Lucasville, Ohio, by an ‘experimental’ death cocktail.