23/05/2008 President
“Parliaments should not only listen to the voice of civil society, but sometimes Parliaments should also take responsibility and lead public opinion when dealing with human rights, rule of law and democracy issues. This has been seen in with abolition of the death penalty, it can be seen in tackling racist and xenophobic tendencies in society”, today said PACE President presenting the conclusions of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliament. Also, Lluís Maria de Puig underlined, “National Parliaments have a special obligation to oversee the execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and introduce legislative changes to bring legislation into line with these standards where necessary”.
According to the conclusions of the Conference, greater transparency in the work of Parliaments should be the goal: “activities have to be made known, draft laws, documents and agendas have to be accessible. There should be no taboo subjects such as budgets or the security sector. In this respect the range of tools offered by e-Democracy provide new possibilities for transparency and communication”.
The next Conference will take place in in 2010. The President announced that Parliaments of Maghreb countries (, and ) and central Asia (, , , and ) will be associated with the work of future Conferences.