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ALDE-PACE Newsletter N°4, 2021

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September 2021 part-session highlights:

  • Under the liberal leadership of the Parliamentary Assembly, MPs clearly stated that the right to live in a healthy, clean and safe environment should be part of the universal corpus of fundamental human rights. PACE unanimously adopted a recommendation to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to prepare additional protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Social Charter. ALDE-PACE continues liberal mobilisation in support of the paradigm shift from ‘environment as a policy’ to ‘environment as a human right’ through a joint working group with Liberal International and PACE President’s Rik Daems’s initiative #EnvironmentRightNow.
  • ALDE-PACE exchanged views on the recent elections and the post-electoral situation in the Russian Federation, with the participation of Russian partners. ALDE-PACE will insist on the declassification of the report that will be prepared by the PACE election assessment mission who travelled to Moscow on 18 and 19 September 2021.   
  • Belarus remains a tremendous concern. ALDE-PACE compiled a list of Belarusian partners of the Council of Europe who are facing repressions for their professional activities and civic engagement. Jacques Maire officially transmitted the list to the CoE Secretary General and PACE Rapporteurs oh Belarus and called on the organisation to step up efforts in assisting those under threat. We recall that Belarus has the grim record of detaining over 700 political prisoners. One of them, Maria Kalesnikava, sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment for organising the election campaign of an opposition presidential candidate, became the 2021 PACE Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize. ALDE-PACE met with Tatiana Khomich, sister of Maria Kalesnikava.
  • Ahead of the current affairs debate on the situation in the Western Balkans, ALDE-PACE exchanged views with Roman Jakic, President of LIBSEEN, former Minister of Defence of Slovenia. Later ALDE Group President Jacques Maire discussed European perspectives for the region with North Macedonia’s Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Nikola Dimitrov at a bilateral meeting.
  • Congratulations to new rapporteurs: Maryna Bardina (Ukraine) AS/EGA: “Promoting inclusive participation in parliamentary and political life”; Petri Honkonen (Finland) AS/MON co-rapporteur on “The honouring of membership obligations to the Council of Europe by Romania”; Yuliia Ovchynnykova (Ukraine) AS/SOC: “Towards Council of Europe seas and oceans strategies against the climate crisis” and Petra Stienen (Netherlands) AS/EGA: “The role of men and boys in stopping gender-based violence”
  • Because ALDE-PACE believes that female MPs should play an active role in PACE and because visibility matters, we are happy to share a few numbers:

ALDE Rapporteurs during the September session: 2 F – 3 M 

ALDE New rapporteurs: 3 F – 1 M

ALDE Questions to invited personalities: 3 F – 1 M

ALDE Speakers in plenary debates on reports: 6 F – 6 M

ALDE-PACE News

ALDE-PACE to meet in Strasbourg
So-called presidential elections in Belarus ‘set to be a sham’, says PACE General Rapporteur Petru
PACE monitoring co-rapporteurs to visit Georgia from 14 to 16 January