24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee (*) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which brings together around 60 of the Assembly’s members, meets in Vilnius on Friday 24 May 2024. The meeting was preceded by a working breakfast of the Women@PACE group, with the participation of...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
“In the Parliamentary Assembly, we look forward to working closely together with the authorities, and in particular with the Seimas, towards achieving the priorities of the Lithuanian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers,” PACE President Theodoros Rousopoulos said today at the opening of the...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
“In this 75th anniversary of the Council of Europe, we may feel that European citizens have lost faith in the European values and in our democratic institutions – some are even turning to exclusion, hatred and populism,” Ingjerd Schou (Norway, EPP/CD) said today, opening of a current affairs...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
“The Council of Europe is celebrating its 75th anniversary. We can be proud of its principled performance when faced with an unprecedented ethical choice. It is one of the very few organisations that expelled the aggressor state right after the start of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
PACE’s Standing Committee, meeting in Vilnius, held a current affairs debate on “Recent challenges to democracy in Georgia”, focusing primarily on the controversial adoption by the Georgian Parliament of the law on transparency of foreign influence and the mass protests it has sparked. Opening...
24/05/2024 | Women@PACE
“With seven women and eight men as Ministers, your government has become the most gender-balanced cabinet in eastern Europe, with women holding key ministries, notably those of Justice, Finance, Economy, and the Interior,” said PACE Secretary General Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis, welcoming...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
Despite international pledges to work towards ending child labour in all its forms, the latest figures show a “worsening global situation”, according to PACE’s Standing Committee – with some 79 million children worldwide, between 5 and 17, working in hazardous conditions. Approving a report by...
24/05/2024 | President
In the framework of the PACE Standing Committee meeting, held today in Vilnius, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Theodoros Rousopoulos, made the following statement: “At the start of the Lithuanian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
PACE’s Standing Committee has urged a move away from a “discriminatory and stigmatising” legal approach which allows the involuntary detention of persons belonging to certain categories, such as those with psychiatric disorders. “These persons have been referred to as ‘socially maladjusted...
24/05/2024 | Standing Committee
A PACE Parliamentary and Electoral Cooperation Division hearing, organised in the margins of the Standing Committee in Vilnius, in collaboration with the Lithuanian Delegation to PACE, focused on sanctions against the Russian Federation and companies aiding in their evasion. The hearing gathered...
23/05/2024 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
A special tribunal, created by agreement between the Council of Europe and Ukraine and supported by an enlarged partial agreement open to non-member States and other international organisations, is now “the best feasible option, in terms of legal basis and political legitimacy” for trying Russia...
22/05/2024 | Monitoring
The Monitoring Committee, which met in Paris on 17 May, welcomed the electoral reforms implemented by Armenia in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission, and stated that the objective to hold genuinely democratic elections had largely been achieved. In adopting the report by Kimmo...