26/06/2026 | 10:48:00 Madam President, ladies and gentlemen. I shall speak in German. Bearing in mind the somewhat heated tone of this week’s debates, my point is this: each national delegation is periodically composed along party-political lines in proportion to the support it receives from the electorate; however, this does not mean that, despite holding different party-political viewpoints, we cannot nevertheless share a common goal in fulfilling our parliamentary mandate. The protection of human rights, the... 25/06/2026 | 17:01:37 Madam President, rapporteurs, I would like to thank you very much for this report, which sets out in a compelling and nuanced manner the plight – as you yourselves state at the outset, to quote you – “in which political dissidents, journalists and human rights activists find themselves in exile”, because the persecution continues. And if I may be permitted to add, these dissidents often find themselves in a bind because, in the countries where they are living, they are sometimes also subject... 24/06/2026 | 15:53:05 Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to know who artificial intelligence (AI) is, you ask AI: "Who is AI?". If AI had replied to me: "What sort of daft question is that?", I would have known that wasn’t AI. AI doesn’t lose its temper. You can’t annoy your GPS, for example, even if you deliberately take a wrong turn. The voice stays the same. So, when I asked AI who AI was, AI patiently told me, as if I were a child: "AI isn’t a 'who', but a 'what'. AI has no body, no feelings, no... 24/04/2026 | 10:46:07 Dear Madam President, Ladies and gentlemen, "Never again", that was the clear common intention, the declared common will when the Council of Europe was founded. Never again did we want to see dictatorship, terror, oppression, megalomania or war in Europe. Never again the Holocaust, never again the murder of minorities or political dissidents. Never again the horror that emanated from Europe. It was about a common Europe, but this time a free Europe. The fact that we had to fight for this... 23/04/2026 | 17:55:59 Dear Chair, dear colleagues, I would like to speak in German. In this day and age, programmes such as ChatGPT create promises and the feeling of being exposed to an unknown danger. This according to Mr Noam CHOMSKY, the American linguist, who wonders: can artificially created products think like humans, conceptually and with logical conclusions? And do such AI machines have similar rights to humans if they are conscious? Mr Noam CHOMSKY famously complained about the loss of intellectual... 27/01/2026 | 17:27:47 Dear Vice President, Dear colleagues, During the impressive Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony this morning, we heard the following question: "Are you doing what's right or what's comfortable?" This uncomfortable question was posed by the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Federation in Ukraine. Are you doing what's right or what's comfortable? The question hits the nail on the head, because in this war in Ukraine, it's not just about Ukraine and its neighbours who, as we heard this morning, fear... 26/01/2026 | 16:36:21 Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the international legal system is the foundation of an international order. The international legal system forms the foundation of an international order. It guarantees stability, predictability and peaceful co-existence between states. A matter, of course, to which we had become accustomed, especially in the Western constitutional states after the Second World War, and a matter, of course, that seemed to be established after the fall of the Berlin Wall... 02/10/2025 | 12:09:51 Mister President, Ladies and gentlemen, I dare say that there is no one in this Council who is not deeply concerned and upset about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. We are not in any way advocates of Benjamin NETANYAHU's government and its conduct of the war. But, ladies and gentlemen, we are also not a court that passes judgment. We are the ones who demand respect for international humanitarian law, call for human rights and name the misery. But if we do so in this way with such a report... 01/10/2025 | 19:05:38 Dear Mister President, colleagues, We are talking here about the opposition. Not the opposition, which in most constitutional states and democracies is part of a system of government in which the political forces change from time to time, in other words countries with a system of opposition and government. After elections, it can happen that the government becomes the opposition and vice versa. We are talking here about an opposition in a dictatorship. An opposition that cannot become the... 01/10/2025 | 16:39:40 Thank you President, colleagues, Thank you very much for this well-founded and well-researched report, which is urgently needed and hits the nerve of both the vulnerability of our democracies and their strengths. Why vulnerability? Demographic change is evident. The population is getting older and the proportion of older people in society as a whole is increasing. What does that mean for elections? The fact that the voices of older people are overriding those of young people, and the voices...