22/04/2024 | Session
A debate on the application by Kosovo* for membership of the Council of Europe, and vote on a draft opinion, was a highlight of the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which took place in Strasbourg on 15-19 April 2024. There was also a joint debate on...
22/04/2024 | Election observation
A 14-member delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), led by Alfred Heer (Switzerland, ALDE), will travel to North Macedonia from 22 to 25 April to observe the conduct of the presidential election on 24 April, alongside observers from the OSCE’s Office for...
22/04/2024 | President
PACE President Theodoros Rousopoulos has expressed his sadness at the death of Baroness Doreen E. Massey, a long-standing member of the Assembly from the United Kingdom and a champion of children’s rights. “Baroness Massey was a deeply committed and active member of our Parliamentary Assembly...
22/04/2024 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Hannah Bardell (United Kingdom, NR), PACE rapporteur on “Threats to life and safety of journalists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan”, has welcomed the decision to release Gubad Ibadoghlu, an Azerbaijani academic, politician, and an anti-corruption campaigner, from prison and place him...
19/04/2024 | Prizes
The deadline for submitting applications for the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize 2024 has been extended to 30 June 2024. The Prize, created in 2013, is awarded each year by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in partnership with the Václav Havel Library and the Charta 77...
19/04/2024 | Session
PACE is calling for laws to protect children by reducing their exposure to harmful content online while not infringing on their opportunities to benefit from the internet. The Assembly, approving a resolution and recommendation on the basis of a report by Joseph O’Reilly (Ireland, EPP/CD), said...
18/04/2024 | Session
“Aggressive power politics must not prevail. Those challenging our common commitment to the rules base international order must be held to account,” was the message at the heart of His Serene Highness Hereditary Prince Alois von und zu Liechtenstein’s address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the...
18/04/2024 | Session
PACE, meeting today in plenary session, deplored the fact that the Council of Europe is now the only regional human rights system which has not yet formally recognised the right to a healthy environment. It recalled that at the 4th Council of Europe Summit in Reykjavik (16-17 May 2023), the Heads...
18/04/2024 | Session
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) today said that our planet’s seas and oceans are “complex ecosystems that are vital for sustaining biodiversity and the livelihood of humans, as well as for regulating the global climate” and added that they could be our “allies” in mitigating...
18/04/2024 | Session
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has warmly welcomed the finalisation of the draft Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law which has been drawn up within the Council of Europe – but regretted that it “does not cover to...
18/04/2024 | Session
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, meeting this week in Strasbourg, held a current affairs debate today on responding to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and preventing further escalations in the Middle East following the recent Iranian attack against Israel. The debate was opened...
17/04/2024 | Session
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) today condemned the “severe persecution” and repression of dissent in Russia and Belarus amid the illegal full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. In adopting a resolution based on the report by Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland...