06/06/2005 | Bureau
At its meeting in Lisbon this morning the Assembly Bureau proposed that PACE hold two urgent debates at its next plenary session (20-24 June 2005), one on follow-up to the third Council of Europe Summit and the other on constitutional reform in Armenia, as well as a current affairs debate on the situation in the republics of Central Asia. The Bureau also decided to invite Soren Jessen-Petersen, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Kosovo, to attend the debate on the current situation in Kosovo. The Assembly itself decides its own final agenda on the first day of the session.
06/06/2005 | News
The promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, support for the cultural dimension of the Council of Europe and the strengthening of social cohesion in Europe are among the priorities of the Portuguese chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers. In Lisbon, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, Chair-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers, informed PACE's Standing Committee that he wished to co-operate with the Assembly in achieving these priority objectives. Referring to the rejection of the EU’s Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands, Mr Freitas do Amaral asked the Assembly to continue to work towards European unity in the face of the economic and social challenges with which Europeans had to contend. PACE President René van der Linden announced that the Assembly was to address the issue at the opening of its next plenary session (20-24 June 2005).
06/06/2005 | Standing Committee
"The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" has succeeded in overcoming the crisis in 2001 and is about to finalise a legislative framework capable of ensuring internal stability, according to PACE’s Standing Committee. The country must, however, step up its efforts to remedy certain shortcomings in its democratic system, the parliamentarians said. Adopting a text this morning, the Committee called on the Council of Europe to help the authorities in Skopje strengthen democracy, pluralism and the rule of law and protect national minorities and social cohesion. According to the parliamentarians, the country should continue, in its foreign relations, to pursue the objective of closer integration with European and international organisations and address the outstanding problems with its neighbours, in particular the dispute with Greece over the question of its name and the final decision on where the border with Serbia and Montenegro (Kosovo) will lie.
06/06/2005 | News
While strikes continue to form an essential ultimate tool for employees to improve their conditions, greater attention needs to be paid to the rights of ordinary citizens to pursue their daily lives unhindered and to the right of society to protect their well-being and its own essential functioning. PACE's Standing Committee today adopted a text on the economic implications of the right to strike in essential services that calls on the governments of the member states to harmonise as far as possible national legislation governing strikes in essential services so that citizens throughout the Council of Europe area can be protected adequately and in a homogeneous manner.
03/06/2005 | Monitoring
In the last three years Russia made little progress regarding its outstanding commitments as a Council of Europe member state, concludes a report on the honouring of obligations and commitments by the Russian Federation, adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly’s Monitoring Committee (PACE) and made public today. A draft resolution, which was prepared by David Atkinson (United Kingdom, EDG) and Rudolf Bindig (Germany, SOC), and will be debated at the PACE summer session in Strasbourg (20-24 June) lists some positive achievements, such as the adoption of a new criminal procedure code, reduction of the number of prisoners in detention centres and the conclusion of border agreements with several neighbour states. On the other hand, the commitments on which the progress is stalling include the formal abolition of the death penalty, the withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova and the obligation to bring to justice those found responsible for human rights violations in Chechnya.
02/06/2005 | President
Addressing the 12th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, PACE President René van der Linden today underlined the need to re-connect Europe with its citizens. “For me, the biggest challenge is to bring Europe to the people. Closer to their views, hopes, ideas, and criticisms. Regrettably, today many of our citizens consider European architecture to be more an office building for bureaucrats rather than a home for themselves. We need to re-connect Europe with its citizens. This challenge must be met, in particular, by the two Council of Europe bodies that are composed of representatives having a direct democratic mandate from the citizens, namely PACE and the Congress”, he said.
02/06/2005 | President
René van der Linden meets the head of UEFA, Europe’s governing body for football, on 3 June to discuss, among other things, ethics and anti-racism in the sport as well as the possibility of establishing a Europe-wide prize with UEFA's backing.
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.