03/10/2007 | Session
''This vote sends an important political message and will encourage Moldova’s political leaders and people in their hopes of joining the European Union,'' declared Marian Lupu, President of the Moldovan Parliament, on 2 October, following the debate on Moldova’s compliance with its obligations. He said that the Moldovan authorities had accepted firm commitments two years previously and had now – thanks to the combined efforts of all the country’s political forces – made good its promises.
03/10/2007 | Session
Since the last monitoring report in 2005, Moldova has advanced significantly on the path of democratic reforms, the Assembly said, and the Parliament has passed an impressive number of laws dealing with the country’s commitments to the Council of Europe. But parliamentarians said it is now time the Moldovan authorities take all the necessary steps to make the new legal framework fully operational. Further improvements should also be made to the legislation on the judiciary, the general prosecutor’s office, political parties and local self-government. Against this background, the Assembly invited the Moldovan authorities to take concrete measures in order to move closer to honouring all the country’s commitments, so that the closing of the monitoring procedure may be envisaged in the foreseeable future.
03/10/2007 | Session
PACE recommended today that regional self-government be regarded not as a problem or a danger but as an effective, unifying means of giving regions a say in political decision-making at both national and European level. In the view of PACE, regionalism, in its various forms, offers guarantees of greater political stability and greater respect for the Council of Europe's values, in particular as regards the spread of democracy.
03/10/2007 | Session
PACE today debated both the opportunities and risks that globalisation represents for the member states of the Council of Europe. In order to maximize the benefits, while maintaining the high standards of social protection and with a view to ensuring that these benefits are widely and equitably shared, PACE called on European leaders to campaign for a vision that combines both prosperity and social protection in the new economic world.
03/10/2007 | President
PACE President René van der Linden yesterday wrote to the Speaker of the Estonian Parliament Ene Ergma, inviting her to verify his official, public position on citizenship and other Estonian issues after she publically accused him of “misleading statements” during his recent visit to the country. In his letter, the President expressed his disappointment that the Speaker “chose to rely on second-hand reports of what I am alleged to have said during my visit, rather than on what I said during our meeting, and my position as set out in the statement I made at the end of my visit to Estonia”.
03/10/2007 | Session
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting this week in plenary session in Strasbourg, yesterday elected twelve judges to the European Court of Human Rights. Judges are elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from lists of three candidates nominated by each State which has ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. Judges are elected for six years and can be re-elected.
03/10/2007 | Session
Turkish President Abdullah Gül, addressing the Assembly today, said his country was fulfilling its commitment to live up to “the highest standards” of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, outlining a series of reforms to improve gender equality, ban discrimination, ensure freedom of expression, upgrade cultural and religious rights and continue its “zero tolerance” policy on torture. Effective implementation “still poses a few challenges”, he said, but pledged the government would give “top priority” to addressing them.
02/10/2007 | Session
The Assembly today said is deeply worried about the fact that a number of cases involving the alleged killing, disappearance, beating or threatening of applicants initiating cases before the European Court of Human Rights have not been fully and effectively investigated by the competent authorities. The parliamentarians urged all member states to fully co-operate with the Court and in particular to cease acts of intimidation against applicants and their lawyers.
02/10/2007 | Session
''Serbia is committed to a democratic solution for Kosovo’s future status which will be based on the three pillars that form the foundations of Europe: human rights, democracy and the rule of law,'' Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica said in his address to the Assembly on 2 October. Mr Koštunica said that Serbia’s goal was to ''secure development and prosperity of the ethnic Albanian minority and of the whole country through a negotiated democratic settlement.'' He added: ''violent and unilateral solutions would seriously endanger peace and stability and jeopardize not only the Balkans but the entire international order.''
02/10/2007 | Session
At the end of a debate on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the Assembly called on the Sudanese Government to fully and immediately comply with the UN’s demands, end its support for violence against civilians and promote humanitarian work. The international community, parliamentarians said, should enforce arms sanctions, restart peace negotiations, and use the deployment of an effective peace-keeping force – as recently voted by the UN Security Council – to protect civilians.
02/10/2007 | Session
“Recently, the Council of Europe has made some new, unprecedented steps towards building bridges with religious communities. In our sight it is the long-awaited response to many calls of religious leaders,” Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and all Russian said before the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in Strasbourg today.
01/10/2007 | Session
Parliamentarians today warned that proposals to set up transit and processing centres for migrants outside the EU raised “serious human rights concerns” and should be tried only as part of a comprehensive approach involving countries of origin, transit and destination. Such centres should be set up first within the EU before extending the experiment to the rest of Europe or beyond, they said. They also urged European states to examine the option of regularisation programmes and to learn from the experience of past programmes. Regularisation programmes, they said should only be considered as one part of an overall strategy for tackling irregular migration. The Assembly also congratulated the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on its work and called for greater co-operation between it and the Council of Europe.