23/01/2023 | 16:16:05 Thank you, Madam Chair. After the horrors of the Second World War we founded this Council of Europe. We had two objectives: no more war and no large-scale war and no genocide. We had a number of smaller wars and now we have a large-scale war. And today we are discussing the issue of a genocide committed by thousands of Europeans in Syria and Iraq. That is a failure in what we sought to do. In 2017 we decided that Daesh had committed genocide and other serious crimes on their international law... 15/03/2022 | 10:33:13 Thank you. When this organisation was founded, in 1949, in the original meeting Churchill held a speech and started: "Throughout our long history we have triumphed over the perils of religious wars, of dynastic wars. After 30 years of conflict I'm confident that we have now reached the end of nationalist wars. After all our victories and all our suffering, are we now to founder in ultimate chaos, in ideological wars triggered by barbarous lawless oligarchies?" These words are more true today... 14/03/2022 | 17:08:30 Thank you, Mr President, and thank you to the Undersecretary of Italy. Thank you very much. You just answered to Sir Christopher CHOPE that all options are possible, including expulsion of the Russian Federation. I've got news for you. The Assembly just adopted the following text: "The Assembly considers that the Russian Federation can no longer remain a member state of the Council of Europe." What other options are possible? Is there any option, any, after Putin has now bombed for about... 24/01/2022 | 14:04:33 It's working, thanks. I supported the challenging of the Russian credentials both on substantive grounds and on procedural grounds and I really think there are big issues with the Russian delegation so they should be examined. So let there be no mistake. But first you check those credentials before you are going to discuss on Russia. If this were to happen on your country, if we were going to challenge your credentials and then discuss a report on your country, you would be angry and I think... 27/09/2021 | 16:52:22 Okay sorry colleagues, thank you very much. Thank you very much to Mr Paul GAVAN for an excellent report which is deeply and deeply depressing. The whole idea of having a Council of Europe was that we would at least be able to prevent a conflict in which member states are involved. It seems that it has become normality that we accept this kind of conflict. We have had the Russian invasion of Georgia. We have had the invasion of Ukraine and now we have had the Azerbaijani attack on Nagorno... 28/01/2020 | 15:41:58 Thank you very much, and thank you very much for the broad support for our report and for the cooperation in writing it. Indeed as Ms Maryvonne BLONDIN, but also Mr John HOWELL and Mr Andreas NICK noted, it took a long time. Please bear with us, we've only been rapporteurs for one year and have done our utmost best to present this report here. Whereas we as an Assembly have been a little bit slow, the Venice commission has not been slow at any rate. Whenever something happened - and... 28/01/2020 | 10:13:19 Thank you. And we can be a bit more precise on what the Polish government is trying to do at the moment. The Polish government has had a reform and I would not consider these reforms reforms but instead deteriorations. The first reform they did was to merge the person of the Minister of Justice with the Prosecutor General. That means that the Minister of Justice is not only Minister of Justice but can also take decisions as Prosecutor General. He can even interfere in individual court... 01/10/2019 | 10:30:13 Thank you, Madam Chair. And let me first congratulate the rapporteur Mr Sylvain WASERMAN on an excellent report. Let's face it, whistle-blowing is one of the few areas in which the Council of Europe has made an impact over the last 10 years. This is the third report on whistle-blowing – or the fourth if you count the report on Snowden. It has set a movement, which has now led to the European legislation which will be implemented in all 28 or 27 EU Member countries. The UK in this case, by the... 30/09/2019 | 15:49:13 Thank you Madame Chair. Thank you Madame Minister for your clear views on this organisation. Five years ago, flight MH17 was downed over eastern Ukraine and 298 innocent people died. No justice has been served. This is still a black stain in the history of Europe in its search for justice. The families of these victims will come to this organisation this week. I have two questions for you. First question, will you discuss justice for the MH17 victims and the cooperation of all Member States... 26/06/2019 | 19:31:58 Dear colleagues, thank you very much for your support. Especially, I'd like to thank Lord FOULKES for his words. This has not been an easy report to write, and if you look at it, I've travelled to many places to speak to many people, not just to Malta, to understand what's going on. I'm a bit taken aback by the opposition of Mr MALLIA. Why are you so opposed to an effective investigation? We should get the truth and an Article 2 inquiry would do just that. The report, Miss CUTAJAR, is called...