02/06/2005 | Standing Committee
PACE's Standing Committee will be meeting in Lisbon on Monday 6 June 2005, at the invitation of the Portuguese Parliament. The meeting will be opened at 11 am by the President of the Assembly, René van der Linden, and the Speaker of the Portuguese Parliament, Jaime Gama. Members will hold an exchange of views with Diogo Freitas do Amaral, Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs and current Chair of the Committee of Ministers of the 46-member organisation. Discussion will focus on the priorities of the Portuguese chairmanship and the conclusions of the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government, held in Warsaw on 16 and 17 May 2005. Among the main items on the agenda are reports on: the economic implications of the right to strike in essential services, recent political developments in "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” in the context of regional stability, development challenges in Europe’s islands and protection of European deltas.
02/06/2005 | Election observation
"The main conditions are in place for democratic elections in Albania. However the truly democratic conduct of elections – in line with commitments Albania subscribed to when it joined the Council of Europe – depends now on the political will of the authorities and parties participating in these elections," said a four-member PACE delegation at the end of a visit to Albania to assess preparations for the 3 July parliamentary elections (30 May to 1 June). "The election commissions and party leadership bear a special responsibility to ensure that their members act not only according to the letter, but also according to the sprit of the law," said the delegation in a statement.
02/06/2005 | President
René van der Linden strongly condemned the sentencing of Mikola Statkevich, Chairman of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, and of Paval Severinets, Youth leader of the Belarusian Popular Front, to two years imprisonment by a court in Minsk on 31 May, for “violation of public order” during a demonstration on 18 October 2004. PACE President commended the Head of the OSCE office in Minsk for publicly recalling that this demonstration was neither violent nor threatening. “These condemnations prolong the list of political prisoners in Belarus, which includes, among others, Mikhail Marynich,a former ambassador and parliamentarian and opposition leader whose immediate release from detention PACE demanded in March this year,” he said. He stressed that jailing opposition leaders will not bring Belarus closer to the Council of Europe. He recalled in this context that a satisfactory reaction was still expected to Assembly Resolution 1371 (2004) accusing several leading representatives of the Belarusian regime of being implicated in the enforced disappearance, or its cover-up, of several prominent opposition figures some years ago.
31/05/2005 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (Germany, LDR), PACE rapporteur on the proceedings against former Yukos executives, today reacted to the nine-year prison sentence against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. "The trial against the former leading executives of Yukos, the oil company that is meanwhile almost totally dismantled, was won by the enemies of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary," she said. "The proceedings, which were tainted by numerous shortcomings regarding the rule of law, as well as the sentence meted out by the court constitute a merciless act of revenge against a man who has openly stood up against the policies of Russia’s President Putin. The nine-year sentence pronounced by the court falls just short of the maximum penalty requested by the prosecution. The court’s reasoning replicates almost word by word the submissions of the prosecution. This judgment massively undermines trust in Russia and must not be the last word in these proceedings. It must be a wake-up call for all those who have until now seen Russia wholly uncritically as a 'crystal-clear' democracy”, she said.
24/05/2005 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Enforced disappearances are “serious human rights violations on a par with murder and torture”, PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee was told during a hearing in Cyprus on the subject. Relatives of missing persons from the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, and from the Chechen Republic, testified that not only disappeared persons but also their families and friends were victims. Participants were also told of shortcomings in the international legal framework which allow perpetrators to escape responsibility, and heard first-hand of the lack of investigation into disappearances in the Northern Caucasus, the region of Europe most affected. Christos Pourgourides (Cyprus, EPP/CD) is currently preparing a report on the subject for PACE.
23/05/2005 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
Measures should be taken to change the image of “clandestine” migrants, a term associated with crime and never with the need for employment, according to participants at the 2nd Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum on Migration which concluded yesterday in Rome. Discussing “facts and myths about migration”, participants – including parliamentarians from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan and Egypt – heard that migrants were often meeting a demand for labour in host countries.
23/05/2005 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights meeting in Limassol (Cyprus) on 23 and 24 May had an exchange of views with the Cypriot authorities. Among the participants were Demetris Christofias, President of the House of Representatives, Kypros Chrysostomides, Government Spokesman as well as representatives of the Standing Committee on Legal affairs and Human Rights of the House of Representatives. Tomorrow, the Committee will hold a parliamentary hearing on enforced disappearances. It will hear testimony from the relatives of missing persons from the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities, as well as from the Chechen Republic. The hearing will also focus on enforced disappearances in Latin America and in the North Caucasus.
23/05/2005 | President
In a letter sent today to the Presidents of the two Chambers of the Romanian Parliament, Nicolae Vacaroiu and Adrian Nastase, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) President René van der Linden expressed, on behalf of PACE, his joy and immense relief at the release of Marie-Jeanne Ion and Sorin Dumitru Miscoci, journalist and cameramen respectively with the Prima TV channel, Eduard Ovidiu Ohanesian of the daily newspaper România Liberă and their guide, who had been held hostage in Iraq since 28 March. “I would pay tribute to their fortitude and assure them and their families that we are delighted at their release. This excellent piece of news concerning their release also provides a new sign of hope as regards the fate of the French Journalist Florence Aubenas and her assistant Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, who have been held in Iraq for 138 days now. I should like to take this opportunity to reiterate our Assembly’s appeal for their immediate release. Our appeal is also a call to universal solidarity, because the abduction of journalists is an assault on the freedom of expression and information, which assault we must combat with all our strength.”
17/05/2005 | News
Speaking at the Council of Europe’s Summit of Heads of State and Government in Warsaw today, Parliamentary Assembly President (PACE) René van der Linden called for much stronger co-operation with international organisations, in particular with the European Union. In this context he thanked Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker for having agreed to prepare a political report on the relations between the EU and the Council of Europe which he said “will certainly provide us with the necessary roadmap”. “
16/05/2005 | News
Speaking in Warsaw at the opening of the Third Council of Europe Summit of Heads of State and Government, Parliamentary Assembly President René van der Linden today called for more intercultural and inter-religious dialogue. “Fighting terrorism must be our priority. However, I do not believe in a clash of civilizations. There is only a clash between human civilization and barbarity. Hence the need for a much increased intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, building on our work in fighting racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia. The Council of Europe and its Assembly, with more than 630 directly elected representatives of the people, is the ideal forum for this dialogue”, Mr van der Linden said.
13/05/2005 | News
Speaking on the eve of the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe, to take place in Warsaw on 16 and 17 May, Parliamentary Assembly President René van der Linden stressed that the Council’s unique position as the only pan-European Organisation should be fully exploited. “For the first time in history, leaders of all 46 European nations will meet on an equal footing to address the challenges facing our continent today,” he said. René van der Linden drew attention to some of the key issues he will put to the European Heads of State and Government in Warsaw: There must be no new dividing lines in Europe. The European Union should not duplicate our work but use the experience, institutions and instruments of the Council of Europe; We should intensify inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue, using the Council of Europe as the best-placed forum; The parliamentary dimension should be reinforced, as should co-operation with civil society, to bring the organisation closer to our citizens; The European Convention on Human Rights is in serious danger because of the enormous and ever-growing backlog of cases before the European Court of Human Rights.
11/05/2005 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
Journalists faced with terrorist atrocities should be free to report them objectively, without restriction by the state, but they should also “avoid a race for sensational news and images which plays into the hands of terrorists”, PACE’s Culture Committee said in a draft recommendation unanimously adopted today. In particular they should “refrain from disseminating shocking pictures or images of terrorist acts which violate the privacy and human dignity of victims or contribute to the terrorising effect of such acts”, the parliamentarians said. The report, by Josef Jařab (Czech Republic, LDR), is due for debate at the Assembly’s Summer plenary session (20-24 June 2005).