25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee, meeting today in Reykjavik, is worried about the shortages of medical supplies that have increased dramatically before, during and since the Covid-19 pandemic, due to stockpiling, restrictions on exports, closed borders, and lockdowns. The parliamentarians denounced a...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
The PACE Standing Committee, meeting today in Reykjavik, underlined the importance of ensuring that the key institutions and mechanisms of democracy function properly during health emergencies, with particular attention to parliaments, elections, local democracy and civil society organisations...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
Laws aimed at combating Covid “might be used to further restrict the rights and fundamental freedoms of civil society actors”, PACE has warned. Approving a resolution based on the report by Margreet De Boer (Netherlands, SOC), the Assembly said Covid restrictions had had a “deleterious effect” on...
25/11/2022 | Standing Committee
Europe can learn “useful lessons” from the experience of prisons during the Covid pandemic, continuing to use alternatives to detention to reduce the prison population and ease overcrowding, according to PACE. In a resolution based on a report by Givi Mikanadze (Georgia, SOC), the Assembly said...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee (*) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which brings together around 60 of the Assembly’s leading members, met in Dublin on Tuesday 31st May 2022. There were welcome addresses by the Speakers of both houses of the Oireachtas, the Irish Parliament...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee, meeting today in Dublin, called on member States to fully integrate a gender equality perspective in legislation, policies, programmes and infrastructure, that cater for the needs of migrant people. In adopting unanimously a resolution today, based on the report by Petra...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
The Standing Committee, meeting in Dublin today, has expressed its concern about harassment and violence perpetrated by anti-abortion activists in many member States, targeting persons who want to protect access to free and safe abortions. According to the resolution unanimously adopted today...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
Addiction to prescribed medicines is the result of an “insidious and gradual process of giving up control of one’s own life for the sake of relief” provided by the prescribed medicine, the Standing Committee said. Such addiction, it added, is a “systemic social problem that requires a holistic...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
Despite all the efforts being made, poverty, especially extreme child poverty, is far from being eradicated. And in light of “unacceptable situations” Council of Europe member States should “demonstrate the political will to address every dimension of extreme child poverty” and ensure no one is...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
The Speakers of the two Houses of the Irish Parliament, the Oireachtas, have welcomed members of PACE to Dublin, underlining the scale of the challenge in dealing with the far-reaching effects of the war in Ukraine, and reiterating their solid support for Ukraine’s people and leaders. Seán Ó...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
PACE members have again expressed their strong support for the organisation of a fourth Council of Europe summit, which would bring together the Heads of State or Government of all member States to renew, improve and reinforce the Organisation at a time of dramatic realignment in Europe. Jacques...
31/05/2022 | Standing Committee
Irish Foreign and Defence Minister Simon Coveney, Chair of the Committee of Ministers, has said Ireland will do all it can to convene a Fourth Summit as soon as possible, to reaffirm the Council of Europe’s role as “the conscience of Europe”. During an exchange of views with members of PACE’s...