26/01/2009 | Session
In a resolution adopted today, PACE asked member states to include disability issues in all areas of policy-making and allocate sufficient funds to them.In line with the conclusions of the rapporteur for the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, Bernard Marquet (Monaco, ALDE), the Assembly asked member states to promote and carry out the Council of Europe Disability Action Plan for 2006-2015, facing people with disabilities.
26/01/2009 | Session
Addressing the Assembly on 26 January on the state of the Council of Europe, Secretary General Terry Davis stated that reducing the organisation’s output will be even more expensive for Europe in the longer term. ''There is a cost attached to that – a cost which can be measured not only in less democracy, less human rights and less rule of law, but also in financial terms. In money which will have to be spent on putting out fires which can be prevented if we have not only the will but also the means to act in time,'' he said.
26/01/2009 | Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs
The credentials of the Albanian delegation to PACE were challenged on procedural grounds on the opening day of the session in Strasbourg. Making the challenge, Mátyás Eörsi (Hungary), who heads the ALDE group, said: “We have reason to believe that one of our Assembly members from Albania was removed in a way which is in breach of the applicable rules.” The Assembly’s Rules Committee will now prepare a report on the matter, and the Assembly will make a final decision on Thursday morning.
26/01/2009 | Session
Candidatures for the "PACE Gender Equality Prize" may now be submitted until 1 June 2009, following extension of the deadline by the Committee. The Prize is awarded in recognition of completed or current action, schemes or initiatives by political parties that have significantly improved women’s participation in elected assemblies or political parties, or in their respective executive bodies.
26/01/2009 | Session
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) today re-elected Lluís Maria de Puig as its President. PACE also elected its Vice-Presidents:
26/01/2009 | Session
Adopting its agenda the opening of the Winter Session, the Assembly today decided to hold a current affairs debate on the situation in Gaza, on Wednesday 28. The same day, the implementation of Resolution 1633 on the consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia, adopted in October 2008, and the humanitarian consequences of the conflict will be discussed. The following day, the Assembly will hold an urgent debate on the consequences of the global financial crisis, as well as on the challenge on procedural grounds of still unratified credentials of the parliamentary delegation of Albania. In the context of the Spanish chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will address the parliamentarians on Wednesday 28 January.
26/01/2009 | Session
“The fact that, in his very first days in office, Mr Obama called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and demanded that the United States comply with the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war gives us great hope that Europe and the United States will now be able to join forces in their traditional role of championing the very highest standards of international law,” Assembly President Lluís Maria de Puig today said at the opening of the Winter Session.
26/01/2009 | Session
Statement by Spain’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Co-operation, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Chairman-in-office of the Committee of Ministers, Lluís Maria De Puig, President of the Parliamentary Assembly, and Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe: “The Holocaust is one of the darkest periods in the history of Europe. It will stay engraved forever in the memory of humankind. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an occasion to pay tribute to the victims and to reinforce our campaign against the racist hatred which motivated the Holocaust."
21/01/2009 | President
PACE President Lluís Maria de Puig has congratulated President Barack Obama on his inauguration, and invited him to address a plenary session of the Assembly in the near future. He warmly welcomed President Obama’s swift action – on his first day in office – to request the suspension of all military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, and his pledge to close the detention centre altogether as soon as possible.
21/01/2009 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Fifty years ago today, the first judges of the European Court of Human Rights were elected by PACE. Under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Assembly – made up of parliamentarians from all 47 Council of Europe member states – elects each judge from a short-list of three candidates nominated by each High Contracting Party. “For the last half century, Europe’s parliamentarians have been proud to contribute to the Court’s astonishing success, by providing it with democratic legitimacy, watching over its development and championing its work,” said Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc (Netherlands, EPP/CD), who currently chairs the Assembly’s Sub-committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court.
21/01/2009 | President
“I welcome the frank discussions with the Russian authorities and their willingness to engage in a constructive and open dialogue with the Assembly,” said PACE President, Lluís Maria de Puig, at the end of a visit of PACE’s Presidential Committee to Moscow on 18 and 19 January 2009. The Presidential Committee visited Moscow to discuss the implementation of Assembly Resolution 1633 (2008) on the “Consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia” with the highest Russian authorities, including the Speakers of the State Duma and Council of the Federation and Foreign Minister.
20/01/2009 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), PACE rapporteur on the human rights situation in the north Caucasus, has expressed his profound indignation following the murder of prominent human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov.“I was deeply shocked to learn of the murder of Stanislav Markelov, who made untiring efforts to combat the impunity of those responsible for human rights violations in Chechnya and elsewhere in the north Caucasus," he said.