19/04/2021 | 19:46:27 Thank you very much, Madam President. When we commemorate later in May this year the liberation of the Austrian concentration camp, Mauthausen, the theme will be "demolished diversity". That was exactly the goal of the Nazi regime to extinguish diversity, to extinguish human beings when they had other beliefs, other origins, other religions, another language or another sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet with its Framework Convention, the Council of Europe builds the foundations for... 19/04/2021 | 12:18:23 Thank you very much. I would like to tackle three issues, starting with the Istanbul Convention. Aleksander POCIEJ already mentioned it, which is really of great concern as I am considering that a kind of proxy war is taken place at the moment and is shaped by mere ideology and intentional misunderstanding of the term "gender". Let me clarify and demystify this concept of gender. To do that, allow me to quote the famous and landmark philosopher David Bowie. I quote: "Gender is between your... 28/01/2021 | 12:57:42 Thank you very much. I would like to applaud Mr Boriss CILEVIČS for this really very, very, good high quality and balanced report on such an important and sensitive issue. It's very important to take a clear standpoint, a clear position against any racial discrimination and racism by law enforcement bodies, and to have a report on such a sensitive topic unanimously adopted in the Committee and without any amendment here in the plenary I think is proof of really high quality work. I want to... 27/01/2021 | 18:25:16 Thank you, Mister Chairman. I would like to say at the outset that my own political roots are in organised civil society. I work closely and a great deal with a number of NGOs at the Austrian, European, and international levels. I find it extremely fruitful to exchange ideas and opinions, especially when we do not always share the same opinion. However, I do not want to be naïve, I am convinced that there is also a dark side of civil society and by that I mean all those who stand outside the... 27/01/2021 | 10:48:44 Mister President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I too would like to thank the rapporteur. I also think the report is quite excellent. I am convinced, however, that it will not be the last. The issue of vaccination will continue to develop globally and we too will have to keep at it and keep looking at how it all works. We all know that we can either defeat this pandemic globally or we cannot defeat it at all, and vaccination nationalism is of course the very last thing we need in a situation like... 26/01/2021 | 17:23:06 Good afternoon, Mister Commissioner. The first question I would like to raise on behalf of my colleague Mr Fourat BEN CHIKHA who is our General Rapporteur on LGBTQI Persons. Governments with undemocratic goals are scapegoating LGBTQI people in order to win majority votes with the effect and aim of weakening the rule of law. How will the European Commission engage with LGBTQI civil society at a national level and draw up the European Commission's rule of law report, and how will you engage... 25/01/2021 | 12:37:02 Thank you very much. I think the progress report very clearly shows that our last year's work was shadowed by COVID-19. Nevertheless we as PACE proved that we are able to uphold democracy, to protect democratic institutions and the rule of law. But we also saw that we had to diminish some of our normal tools to control democracy. For instance, many election observations had to be cancelled and we also saw that some governments tried to misuse the situation to diminish parliamentary power. But... 20/11/2020 | 16:45:33 Thank you very much, A policy that puts equal treatment, inclusion and the protection of human rights, including women's rights of course, high on the agenda is not a policy for fair weather. If we have no other problems, then let us just do equal rights; no, this is a policy for every day, a very important policy. Gender equality, the guarantee that women can live free from violence, that they are empowered, must be a central basis for all political action and must go hand in hand with... 20/11/2020 | 12:04:18 Thank you very much. The debate about the Athens Declaration is a source of worry, of doubt and of consternation not only because some countries used, or maybe I better say misused, the pandemic to declare a state of emergency and thus weaken parliamentary democracy and rule of law. It is also alarming as it puts spotlights on shortcomings of these countries to misuse the virus to further put particular human rights under pressure. I think about Poland and Turkey, who loudly discussed... 03/10/2019 | 17:41:57 It is common knowledge that every third European woman is a survivor of violence. It's an inconvenient truth of course but it's a fact. It's a known fact and it's evidence-based and because of that we can react. You can act. We can decide about laws or measures that tackle the issue. For instance, implementing this simple Convention. For many of us, this resolution was really an eye-opener. Thank you once again very much for that because many of us were not aware that also in the field of...