22/01/2024 Session
Addressing the Assembly in the framework of the presentation of PACE’s progress report, PACE former President Tiny Kox (Netherlands, UEL) cited the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine as the main priority of his mandate, “a war that should never have been started, and it now has to end as soon as possible. We cannot lose more people, more children, more future chances for us”, he said. “We urgently need peace, and we urgently need justice for everybody. To those responsible for this massacre, including the highest level of the Russian leadership, and to those who have suffered so much”, Tiny Kox stated.
The follow-up to the Reykjavik Summit; the election of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights; the lists of candidates for the posts of judges at the European Court of Human Rights submitted by Bulgaria, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Serbia; the 2024 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize; the 2024 Vigdís Prize for Women’s Empowerment; and the activities of the elections observations in 2023, were among the items in the progress report.
This report reviews the work and decisions of the Assembly's subsidiary bodies since the last session.
It also includes annual statistics on the gender breakdown of Assembly positions, presented during the January session. These show, in particular, that in 2023, the total number of women members of the Assembly represented 45% – a marked increase compared to 40% in 2022.
The Assembly also discussed in more detail the observation of the early parliamentary elections in Serbia (17 December 2023), on the basis of a report presented by Stefan Schennach (Austria, SOC).