29/01/2025 | 12:16:24 Dear Mister President, dear honourable guests, I'm speaking today not only as group leader, but also as the head of the German delegation. That fills me with awe. The Holocaust is a crime against humanity that to this day exceeds my imagination. It has brutally cost the lives of various population groups, including LGBTIQ, the community of Roma and Traveler, and six million Jews. There are so many terrible images that are burned into the memory, and there are no pictures of many more terrible... 28/01/2025 | 17:03:03 Mister President, In a world full of conflicts, we are talking about probably the most difficult conflict of all conflicts in the world - the conflict between Israel and Palestine, where, if you look at the history of both actors, you can actually understand why they are laying claim to a certain piece of land. We have to understand that Israel is the only real democracy in the region surrounded by autocracy and dictators. I want to thank Ms Saskia KLUIT for the report. Saskia did not try to... 27/01/2025 | 16:51:24 Thank you very much, Mister President. First of all, congratulations to President Theodoros ROUSOPOULOS for his re-election after one very successful year. The world is in a very difficult and dangerous situation. I don't know where we will be in a few years. What I know is that there's a loss of trust in our organisation. In the Council of Europe. My impression is that many more people know our organisation. And we saw the figures the President presented to us. And I think this has to do... 02/10/2024 | 16:06:58 Dear Mister President, (Not only the Socialists but Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group as well! I have to say it! It's important because at the end they will leave ...!) So, I don't understand really this politicisation of this question; this is a very normal procedure. It's maybe the first time and new for us, but it is a very common procedure and you know it, each and every one [of us] should know it from their national parliaments so there is no reason why in this case the group of the... 01/10/2024 | 18:28:09 Dear Mister President, dear colleagues, We have to know that we are not discussing about the conflict between two countries. This is what the government, so-called government of Azerbaijan, wants to say. No, this is not about it. And it's not about criticising the people of Azerbaijan. They are very brave and honest people. It's about a government who has no legitimisation to be a government, because all the elections, whatever we saw, are falsified elections. This is the truth, and this is... 01/10/2024 | 12:23:49 Thank you very much for your encouraging speech. You mentioned the United Nations, and we had the opportunity on different occasions to speak about your experiences in New York. And what is really important is to understand that we have a crisis of international organisations. How could we not have a crisis if we have some crisis in democracies in some countries? But the good thing in this organisation is that we are based on values of democracy, rule of law, and human rights, and we can... 27/06/2024 | 10:19:24 Dear Mister President, dear colleagues, thank you very much. Georgia has been a member of this organisation since 1999, and although it was not always very easy and we had to discuss a lot of things, it was clear that Georgia was going direct way to Europe and in a way to respect our values. And I don't know why Georgia is leaving this way now. This Council of Europe, this Parliamentary Assembly, is the guardian of the values, and because of this we send a clear signal today to Georgia. And I... 24/06/2024 | 12:06:14 Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mister President. Mister President, thank you very much for this anthem. Maybe we should start all the sessions with such an anthem because it reminds us who we are, where we are and what we stand for, because there are around 700 million people, and some of them do not even know what the Council of Europe is! But they trust in us, they trust in us, in our values and our roots. And the others who are waiting for us to go back to their countries or we... 18/04/2024 | 17:14:37 Mister President, thank you very much. In these hours, the Middle East is on the brink. On the precipice of a regional war that would have massive repercussions for the whole world, now that the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is keeping us on tenterhooks. The country that is taking brutal action against its own population and threatening the entire region, not just Israel, Iran is also, not coincidentally, the country that supplies Russia with the weapons to terrorise the people of... 16/04/2024 | 17:52:49 Thank you very much, Mister President. This is a historical moment, dear colleagues, dear women and men of Kosovo, I know how you like more to say "Kosova". Dear Ms Dora BAKOYANNIS, I really have to thank you very much for this report, and I have to thank you very much for your wisdom, your power, your encouragement and as we know as Chairs of groups, your persistence. In the end, all this makes progress possible. I know that you face all kind of criticism from different actors in different...