01/04/2008 | President
“It is not true that security is more important than freedom,” said PACE President Lluis Maria de Puig, concluding a conference on anti-terrorist measures and human rights in Athens on Friday. “As soon as you restrict freedom, this itself becomes an element of insecurity.” Fighting terrorism with illegal and inhuman actions only leads to barbarism, he pointed out, criticising the complicity of European governments in abuses discussed at the conference, such as secret detention, illegal renditions and unfair terrorist blacklisting procedures.
31/03/2008 | President
The need for more focused Council of Europe action to integrate migrants was among subjects discussed by PACE President Lluis Maria de Puig and Greek President Karolos Papoulias during a meeting in Athens this week on the fringe of a meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly.
28/03/2008 | President
Addressing the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly in Athens today, Lluís Maria de Puig, President of the PACE, said that protection of the natural environment had to be regarded as a fundamental human right. One of the objectives that he had set himself during his term of office was the integration of the right to a healthy environment into the European Convention on Human Rights, through an additional protocol.
25/03/2008 | Monitoring
Mátyás Eörsi, (Hungary, ALDE) and Kastriot Islami (Albania, SOC), co-rapporteurs for PACE Monitoring Committee will make a fact-finding visit to Tbilisi on 26-27 March, as part of the monitoring of Georgia’s obligations and commitments. They will hold talks with the President, Prime Minister, Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice and the Interior, Speaker of the Parliament, President of the Supreme Court, and are also expected to meet representatives of the opposition, the media and NGOs.
23/03/2008 | President
PACE President, Lluis Maria de Puig, today welcomed the announcement by the Cypriot President and the Turkish Cypriot leader to resume talks on the reunification of the island. The President commended the announced reopening of the Ledra Street crossing as highly symbolic.
20/03/2008 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Illegal renditions and secret detentions in Europe, as well as the unfairness of procedures used by the UN Security Council and the EU to blacklist people with alleged links to terrorism, are the main themes of a major conference on “anti-terrorist measures and human rights” taking place in Athens on 28 March 2008. Organised by Greece’s Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights (MFHR) in collaboration with PACE, the conference will bring together parliamentarians, leading academics and experts to discuss why and how terrorism should be fought within international law.
20/03/2008 | Monitoring
At its meeting in Paris on Tuesday, PACE Monitoring Committee decided to declassify an information note on the fact-finding visit to Azerbaijan by its two co-rapporteurs Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD) and Evguenia Jivkova (Bulgaria, SOC).
19/03/2008 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (Germany, ALDE), Rapporteur of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly on the Gongadze case, welcomed the conviction of three former police officers for the killing of Georgiy Gongadze, a Ukrainian journalist whose disappearance in September 2000 gave rise to allegations that senior officials of the Kuchma administration were involved. "While I welcome the conviction of the three police officers, I must insist that the Gongadze file is not closed until the instigators and organisers of this crime have also been held to account.
18/03/2008 | Monitoring
Meeting in Paris on 18 March 2008, PACE Monitoring Committee expressed its deep concern about the arrest of more than one hundred persons in Armenia and the conditions in which such arrests took place, following the events of 1 March during which eight people died and some two hundred persons were injured.
18/03/2008 | Monitoring
PACE Monitoring Committee, meeting in Paris today, decided to declassify an information note by the Co-rapporteurs on Ukraine, Hanne Severinsen (Denmark, ALDE)* and Renate Wohlwend (Liechtenstein, EPP/CD) on their recent fact-finding visit to Ukraine.
18/03/2008 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
“In 2007, Europe remained the world’s most visited region. Seven European countries – France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and the Russian Federation – are among the world’s ten most visited destinations. Nearly half of the 898 million visitors globally travelled to European countries in 2007. Tourist flows being expected to double in the next two decades, this poses an important development challenge to our member states,” José Mendes Bota (Portugal, EPP/CD) explains in a report adopted today by the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development.
18/03/2008 | Monitoring
At its meeting in Paris today, PACE Monitoring Committee decided to declassify the draft report on the honouring of obligations and commitments by Serbia. The report has not yet been approved by the committee and therefore only reflects the postion of the co-rapporteurs Andreas Gross (Switzerland, SOC) and Charles Goerens (Luxembourg, ALDE).