19/11/2014 President
PACE President Anne Brasseur has urged the Belgian Parliament to task a committee with looking into the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the judgments of the Strasbourg Court at national level.
Meeting yesterday with the President of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives Siegfried Bracke and Senate President Christine Defraigne on the margins of the PACE Standing Committee in Brussels, she also said that steps still need to be taken to sign and/or ratify certain key Council of Europe conventions, including those on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, on Non-discrimination (Protocol No. 12 to the ECHR) and also the Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems.
Ms Brasseur also met with Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, the current Chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, to discuss current human rights and political challenges in Europe. “The number one challenge still facing our organisation is developments in Ukraine and Russia,” she said, “but Azerbaidjan and the crackdown on civil society continues to be a major preoccupation.” Another priority they discussed was accelerating accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights.