30/01/2020 | 16:13:14 Thank you, Mr Chair. Dear Colleagues, Libya is suffering endless bloodshed in recent years, being the theatre of following interventions, openly involved in the civil war. At the same time, the collapse of state structures has turned the area into concentration camps for migrants from Africa at the mercy of human traffickers. However, all of the above have a common origin and a specific course. As it was said by Mr George PAPANDREOU, Libya is currently in this tragic situation because, in... 28/01/2020 | 18:35:51 Thank you Mr Chairperson. Dear colleagues, I would also like to congratulate the reporter Lord George FOULKES for his report on an admittedly timely topic, as violent incidents and attacks on journalists are constantly on the rise. The most striking example is the matter of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017, who was leading the investigation on corruption charges in Malta and had made revelations in relation to the Panama Papers. Another common example is the alarming... 02/10/2019 | 16:56:07 Dear colleagues, I would first like to thank the rapporteur for her excellent work. As the oldest multi-national development bank in Europe, the Bank has a distinct mission aimed at promoting projects of social infrastructure and development. The discussions concerning the social mission of the bank are important: taking into account the fact that our continent counts tens of millions of impoverished people, as well as millions of unemployed and homeless people, it becomes clear that the... 10/04/2019 | 19:11:32 I congratulate Mr Tiny KOX on the very high quality of his report and on his excellent work. The report really must have required a huge effort – it is a tremendous amount of work, and we are very grateful to him for it. As other colleagues have pointed out, we now confront – for the first time in the 70 years since this Organisation was founded – a very severe and important crisis. We are at a crossroads, and we need to make a choice. That choice will be decisive and will have huge... 10/04/2019 | 15:52:07 I thank the rapporteurs for their reports. Ms Elvira KOVÁCS’s report contains some very useful suggestions for combating hate speech and intolerance, which, unfortunately, are still on the rise. We therefore support the draft resolution’s recommendations, including the recommendation that Member States take the legislative and other measures necessary to ensure that political parties are in line with the relevant ECRI recommendations, not only through voluntary self-regulation mechanisms, but... 09/04/2019 | 16:43:01 What lies at the heart of Ms Petra De SUTTER's excellent report is the need to ensure convergence of human rights standards all over Europe. As the report correctly suggests, many institutional arrangements and other arrangements need to be made before the proposal for the establishment of a permanent European Union mechanism on democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental rights can be put into concrete form and take action. However, if those conditions are not met, prospects will be dim, and... 09/04/2019 | 10:38:46 Resolution 70/1, through which world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, is the bedrock on which all countries of the world should base their future development to safeguard their own viability and that of our planet. The universal and interlinked character of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the 169 targets should guide us all towards sustainable development until 2030. In an interdependent and globalised world, the 2030 Agenda is, by nature, universal and... 23/01/2019 | 15:45:58 We can all agree on the importance of multi-faceted and plural access to information regarding political life and democracy in our countries, especially during election time. Nonetheless, even if the obligations stemming from legislation on the mass media to ensure equal representation of all views during the pre-election periods are applied, we cannot claim that there is objectivity and pluralism if, throughout the rest of the year, information is subordinated to political and economic power... 22/01/2019 | 11:38:11 The report before us, and the draft resolution in particular, lays out important parameters that will undoubtedly provide the backbone to the revised Code of Good Practice in Referendums that the Venice Commission will prepare. I congratulate Dame Cheryl GILLAN on the extensive research she has undertaken and the very useful recommendations. There are important issues at stake that I should like to underline. Referendums are a form of direct democracy and should be used to complement...