07/12/2011 | Monitoring
PACE co-rapporteurs for Georgia, Kastriot Islami (Albania, SOC) and Michael Aastrup Jensen (Denmark, ALDE), today expressed their concern at the presence of Russian polling stations in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
06/12/2011 | President
PACE President, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, today started an official visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina (6-8 December). During his visit, he is due to meet members of the Presidency, members of the Collegiums of the House of Representatives and of the House of Peoples, the leaders of the major political parties, as well as representatives of the international and diplomatic community.
06/12/2011 | Monitoring
Returning from their fact-finding visit to Moldova (28 November-1st December 2011), PACE co-rapporteurs Lise Christoffersen (Norway, SOC) and Piotr Wach (Poland, EPP/CD) welcomed the decision of the Moldovan parliament to set the date of the election of the President on 16 December 2011.
06/12/2011 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
"In a world of sport that has become global, the financial stakes are now enormous, and even the economic crisis has not curbed the general tendency towards excess." With these words, François Rochebloine (France, EPP/CD) this morning opened the hearing in Paris on good governance and ethics in sport, organised in the context of his writing of a report on the subject.
06/12/2011 | Prizes
The Council of Europe Museum Prize for 2012 has been awarded to the Rautenstrauch‐Joest‐Museum in Cologne (Germany) by PACE Committee on Culture, Science and Education. The Rautenstrauh‐Joest‐Museum is an anthropological museum of more than a century old, now in a high quality new building in Cologne, Germany.
05/12/2011 | Election observation
Despite the lack of a level playing field during the Russian State Duma elections, voters took advantage of their right to express their choice, the international observers concluded in a statement issued today. The observers noted that the preparations for the elections were technically well-administered across a vast territory, but were marked by a convergence of the state and the governing party, limited political competition and a lack of fairness.
05/12/2011 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“We in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe strongly believe that Kyoto should not be allowed to expire without a new regime to replace it. If a new regime cannot be agreed, then Kyoto must continue until this occurs,” Alan Meale (United Kingdom, SOC) warned at the Durban IPU panel on ‘creating a virtuous push and pull cycle for low carbon and renewable energy projects’.
02/12/2011 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
As part of the preparation of a report by François Rochebloine (France, EPP/CD), PACE's Committee on Culture will be holding on 6 December in Paris (9.30 a.m., Council of Europe Office, 55, Avenue Kléber) a hearing on issues of governance and ethics in the sports world. The questions of financial fair play and protecting young migrant footballers, as well as issues of power and internal politics inside sports bodies, will be addressed.
01/12/2011 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“The clock is ticking on the Kyoto Protocol. Unless agreement is reached at Durban, the global agreement on targets and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions negotiated at Kyoto will almost certainly expire without any binding targets or actions agreed for the period 2012-20,” today warned Lord Prescott (United Kingdom, SOC), former rapporteur on climate change for the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe (PACE) and Kyoto Treaty signatory.
30/11/2011 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
“With 1971 boatpeople having perished in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach European soil from North Africa, the year 2011 sets a sad record as the deadliest year for boatpeople,” PACE rapporteur Tineke Strik (Netherlands, SOC) said at the end of a hearing on this issue, organised by PACE Migration Committee. “Never before the Mediterranean Sea has been as closely monitored as this year because of the war in Libya and still more boat people than ever perished or disappeared,” the rapporteur added.
30/11/2011 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
“The situation in Syria has become intolerable and requires action,” stressed today Christopher Chope (United Kingdom, EDG), Chair of PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population, at a meeting in Paris and “unreservedly condemned the crackdown and killings in Syria.” He called upon Council of Europe member states to take all the necessary steps to impose immediate sanctions on the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
30/11/2011 | Political Affairs and Democracy
PACE rapporteurs on Belarus, Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), and on the death penalty, Renate Wohlwend (Liechtenstein, EPP/CD) have expressed their dismay at the death sentence handed down today on Dmitry Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalev by the Belarusian Supreme Court, which found them guilty of the fatal bombing in the Minsk Metro on 11 April 2011.