16/01/2009 | President
PACE Presidential Committee, led by its President, Lluís Maria de Puig, will visit Moscow on 19 January 2009 as part of the follow-up to the Assembly’s resolution on the consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia. The parliamentarians are due to meet the Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov, the Chairman of the Council of the Federation Sergey Mironov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, the Deputy Head of the General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Deputy Head of the Security Council Yury Zubakov and the Ombudsman of the Russian Federation Vladimir Lukin, as well as the members of the Russian delegation to PACE.
15/01/2009 | Session
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 one of the highlights of PACE winter session, which will take place in Strasbourg from 26 to 30 January 2009. The parliamentarians will discuss the reports by Luc Van den Brande (Belgium, EPP/CD) and Mátyás Eörsi (Hungary, ALDE), co-rapporteurs of the Assembly’s Monitoring Committee, and Corien W.A. Jonker (Netherlands, EPP/CD), rapporteur of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population, following their visits to these countries.
15/01/2009 | President
Statement by Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Chairman of the Committee of Ministers and Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation, and Lluís Maria De Puig, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: “When it acceded to the Council of Europe in 2001, Azerbaijan undertook to guarantee the freedom of expression and independence of the media, which are essential preconditions for the functioning of a democratic society. We find it highly regrettable that the Azerbaijani National Radio and Television Council recently decided not to renew the licences of several foreign broadcasters."
13/01/2009 | Monitoring
Georges Colombier (France, EPP/CD) and John Prescott (United Kingdom, SOC), PACE co-rapporteurs on the monitoring of obligations and commitments by Armenia, will go to Yerevan from 14 to 16 January 2009, for a follow-up visit in connection with the implementation of PACE Resolutions 1609 (2008) and 1620 (2008) on the functioning of democratic institutions in Armenia.
09/01/2009 | Bureau
PACE Bureau meeting in Barcelona, today adopted the following statement: “PACE Bureau fully supports the resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 8 January 2009. It calls for an immediate ceasefire to be respected by all sides. Both sides must understand that violence, destruction and death will only lead to more violence and death. Our Assembly, which has always stood for peace and human rights, cannot accept the deadly escalation of the last days."
06/01/2009 | Bureau
The President of the Parliament of Catalonia, Ernest Benach, will be delivering a welcome address at the opening of the Bureau meeting, to be held at the said Parliament in Barcelona. The Bureau will be updating the draft agenda for the PACE Winter Session (26-30 January 2009) and taking stock of the current work of the Presidential Committee and various other committees on the implementation of Resolution 1633 (2008) on the consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia. The agenda also includes the preparations for the 2009 debate on the state of human rights in Europe and the events connected with the 60th anniversary of the Council of Europe.
05/01/2009 | President
PACE President Lluís Maria de Puig has called for an end to all violence in Gaza. He condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel by the Hamas movement and the air strikes by Israel on Gaza, leading to a disproportionate number of casualties. "Violence, destruction and death will never resolve the Middle East problem. On the contrary, they will lead to more violence and death. The only solution is a political one: renewing the ceasefire, dialogue and negotiations," he said. "The Assembly, which has always stood for peace and human rights, cannot accept the deadly escalation of the last hours."
23/12/2008 | President
“The Council of Europe was created 60 years ago with the aim of achieving greater unity between its members. Its core objective is to preserve and promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The coming year, 2009, is an opportunity to mark this anniversary and to look towards the future and the challenges it brings" stated Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Chairman of the Committee of Ministers and Spain’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Co-operation, Lluís Maria De Puig, President of the Parliamentary Assembly, and Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
18/12/2008 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Council of Europe has a unique opportunity to take up a global challenge, not its usual vocation of maintaining peace, but that of getting humankind to refocus on its environment, according to John Prescott (United Kingdom, SOC), speaking during a Paris meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly’s Environment Committee. “Throughout the 20th century, human beings have served the economy, but in the 21st, it is the economy’s to serve human beings and the environment,” he said. Mr Prescott proposed that a parliamentary debate be held in 2009 to help generate a political consensus on a fair way of distributing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
18/12/2008 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
In a draft recommendation adopted today, the Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs calls for a genuine policy to be devised in member states for preventing chronic diseases associated with environmental pollution – including pollution in the home – and for environmental medicine to be recognised as a new medical discipline.
18/12/2008 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“The large-scale production of plants such as wheat, maize or sugar cane to manufacture agrofuels is not a miracle solution to cope with the alarming reduction in fossil energy. On the contrary, it might even, as has happened in South America, cause a major price increase in agricultural products for human consumption, thus jeopardising access to food,” declared Nigel Evans (United Kingdom, EDG), member of the Committee on the Environment, who wrote a report on “Growing food and fuel.”
18/12/2008 | Monitoring
Declaring it “unacceptable” that persons could be charged and deprived of their liberty for political motivation in Armenia in relation to the events of 1 and 2 March 2008, the Monitoring Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) yesterday recommended suspending the voting rights of Armenia’s eight-member delegation to the Assembly until the authorities “have clearly demonstrated their political will to resolve this issue.” The co-rapporteurs would visit the country in January 2009, with a view to reporting back to the Committee on the first day of the January 2009 part-session on any progress with respect to the release of these persons.