12/10/2011 | Political Affairs and Democracy
Renate Wohlwend (Liechtenstein, EPP/CD), rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on abolition of the death penalty, expressed her dismay after a military court in the northern West Bank has sentenced a former member of the Presidential Guard to death.
11/10/2011 | Prizes
The French town of Landerneau (Brittany) will receive the 2011 Europe Prize at a ceremony on Saturday 15 October, which will bring together a large public and local personalities in the town’s concert hall, “The Family”. On this occasion, a delegation of parliamentarians, led by the Chairman of the PACE Sub-Committee on the Europe Prize, Axel Fischer (Germany, EPP/CD), will present the prize to Landerneau’s Mayor, Patrick Leclerc.
11/10/2011 | Monitoring
The co-rapporteurs for PACE's monitoring of Ukraine, Mailis Reps (Estonia, ALDE) and Marietta de Pourbaix-Lundin (Sweden, EPP/CD), have expressed their concern and disappointment at the sentence passed on Yulia Tymoshenko today. “This is an example of the criminalisation of political decision-taking,” the co-rapporteurs said.
10/10/2011 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Council of Europe’s Revised Social Charter – which allows trade unions and NGOs to bring collective complaints against states over social rights – needs to be stronger, more widely applied and better known, a parliamentary hearing on the charter heard this week. The hearing was organised by PACE’s Sub-committee on the European Social Charter and Employment to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Charter.
10/10/2011 | President
PACE President Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has condemned last night’s violent clashes in Egypt’s capital, which led to the death of at least 24 people, following a protest by Coptic Christians, joined by some Muslims, against an attack on a church in Aswan province last week.
10/10/2011 | Monitoring
Kastriot Islami (Albania, SOC) and Michael Aastrup Jensen (Denmark, ALDE), PACE co-rapporteurs on the honouring of obligations and commitments by Georgia, will make a fact-finding visit to that country from 11 to 14 October.
10/10/2011 | President
Speaking at a forum in Baku on the humanitarian aspects of the challenges of the 21st century, PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu has said that overcoming prejudice, discrimination and xenophobia through a truly intercultural model of “living together” is a key challenge for Europe and the world.
07/10/2011 | Bureau
Meeting this morning in Strasbourg, PACE Bureau adopted the following statement: “The Bureau of the Assembly is deeply shocked by the terrorist acts recently committed in Norway and Turkey, and condemns these massacres in the strongest terms...”
07/10/2011 | Session
At the last session, as part of a Council-wide reform process, the Assembly approved in principle a series of measures to enable it to become more politically relevant, more effective and more visible, as well as improving its members’ involvement. Adopting the proposals presented by Andreas Gross (Switzerland, SOC) and Egidijius Vareikis (Lithuania, EPP/CD), the Assembly amended several provisions of its Rules of Procedure and terms of reference of its committees in order to implement the decisions taken in June 2011.
07/10/2011 | Session
Concerned about the wide discrepancy across Europe in how undocumented migrant children are treated, the PACE today recommended that member states put in place a firm legislative basis and implement their laws in practice, so as to guarantee undocumented children’s right to education, health care and housing.
07/10/2011 | Session
PACE has called for the Council of Europe to lead the way in establishing global standards for data protection. Adopting a resolution on the protection of privacy and personal data on the Internet, based on a report by Andreja Rihter (Slovenia, SOC), the Assembly said the Council’s Convention on Automatic Processing of Personal Data was the most advanced set of standards in the world at present.
07/10/2011 | Monitoring
PACE Monitoring Committee held an exchange of views with the Danish Helsinki Committee on the findings contained in its monitoring report of the trials against four former government members in Ukraine. Following this exchange of views the committee expressed its concern regarding the criminal prosecution of former government members.