29/01/2020 | 18:24:44 Thank you very much, Mr President. Dear Colleagues, This Monday the credentials of the Russian delegation were challenged on substantive grounds. In line with Article 8.3 of our Rules of Procedure, the Monitoring Committee was seized for a report on this challenge. The Monitoring Committee elected me as its rapporteur and I therefore now have the honour to present you a resolution adopted by the Monitoring Committee, as well as an explanatory memorandum on the matter. As always, the... 29/01/2020 | 16:45:54 Yes, sorry to say Mr President, but let me first say that I'm disappointed that if this is the position of the European Conservatives, I'm quite shocked because also the European Conservatives were involved in this process. I never heard that this was the position but Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO speaks to us on behalf of the group. I hope that we get some clarification on that because this is the uniqueness of the proposal now made by our colleague, Mr Frank SCHWABE. This is a process in which we... 27/01/2020 | 15:55:09 Thank you very much, Mr President. Thank you very much to the colleagues who contributed in the debate. To sum up, I heard that many of us are very satisfied with the good work done by Ms Liliane MAURY PASQUIER. I will pass the compliments that you gave. Many of you are also very satisfied with the fact that we improved the relation with the Committee of Ministers and Secretary General, the trilogue, as our new president calls it. And I think that the new joint mechanism that we will decide... 27/01/2020 | 12:32:31 Thank you very much, Mr President. May I first start by congratulating you for your election. You will be our president for the next two years and that means you will be our president. You have been elected by all of us and I wish you well. It will be challenging times. I will come back on that later. May I begin by thanking the assembly for granting me the honour to present the progress report on the activities since the end of our last part-session. The report adopted by the Bureau of the... 03/10/2019 | 19:56:52 Thank you very much, Madame President. I want to thank Mr Egidijus VAREIKIS and Ms Maryvonne BLONDIN for their report on the "Functioning of democratic institutions in Moldova" or, better said, the "non-functioning" of democratic institutions in this member state in the heart of Europe. When you read the report, you see how the rapporteurs describe that a member state in the heart of Europe has become the victim of an oligarch who was able to take almost every control over almost everything... 03/10/2019 | 12:24:34 Madam President, Madam Secretary General, ambassadors, dear colleagues. It is inspiring for me to see how we are here together in this hemicycle, where we are allowed because our governments and our parliaments signed and ratified, at a certain moment, the Statute of the Council of Europe and European Convention of Human Rights. To be here is not for free. It comes with obligations. According to the Statute, the goal of the Council of Europe is to bring greater unity between its members for... 01/10/2019 | 13:12:47 Mr President, May I first thank you and Madame de Montchalin for the great help France gave to get this organisation back on track again. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup. Do you agree with -- could you agree with -- me that the next major step that we should take is the accession of the European Union to the European Convention of Human Rights so that we indeed can strengthen the whole system of human rights, the rule of law and democracy. As you know, in the Lisbon Treaty it is already... 27/06/2019 | 17:31:04 I apologise, Madam Chair, that I was late. That is of course unacceptable. These days are a bit busy, so sorry for that, and you had to preside so that I have to take the floor. The murder of Boris Nemtsov shocked many citizens in Russia and also outside Russia. The murder of a politician draws extra attention, not because it's from a higher level but because any murder is of course unacceptable. But the politicians are also representing people. If you kill a politician, then you more or... 26/06/2019 | 15:59:52 Thank you very much Madam President. In April this Assembly decided on my proposal with 3/4 majority that all Member States would have the obligation to participate in both statutory organs of the Council of Europe and the Committee of Ministers and in this Assembly. In May our Ministers of Foreign Affairs meeting in Helsinki came to the same position. That you have to be in both organs of our organisation if you want to be a Member. On Monday the Ms Petra De SUTTER reports' adoption created... 25/06/2019 | 10:48:59 Thank you, Mr President. Never a dull moment in the past three months, shows the progress report of our Rapporteur and, indeed, we did a lot of work here in this assembly. In the April part-session, we took decisions on the role and the mission of this assembly and this organisation and our main challenges and that is now a work in progress. We are on the right track, as I said yesterday. We formulated our proposals in a resolution and we formulated our proposals to the Committee of...