Athens, 22 January 2021

Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) to hold 2021 winter plenary session starting Monday with participation of Greek delegation

The Greek delegation to PACE will participate in the 2021 winter plenary session taking place from January 25 to 28 in a hybrid manner. The members of the delegation are: Dora Bakoyannis (Head), Evripidis Stylianidis, Foteini Pipili, Dimitris Kairidis, Nina Kasimati, Georgios Katrougalos, George Papandreou, Theodoros Roussopoulos, Anastasios Chatzivasileiou, Sokratis Famellos, Alexandros Triantafyllidis, Liana Kanelli, Kyriakos Velopoulos and Foteini Bakadima. 

During the session, the Assembly will elect the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, the Secretary General of the Assembly and the judges to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Greece and Switzerland. These elections will be held by individual electronic voting. 

The Assembly will debate the ethical, legal and practical considerations of COVID-19 vaccines. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will address parliamentarians in the debate. 

Other items on the agenda:
-ethnic profiling in Europe ,
-restrictions on NGO activities in Council of Europe member States,
-discrimination against persons dealing with chronic and long-term illnesses,
-the independence of judges in Poland and in the Republic of Moldova (with the participation of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, former Federal Minister of Justice of Germany), and on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.

Debates on the progress of the Assembly’s monitoring procedure and on post-monitoring dialogue with Montenegro are foreseen. 
A report on parliamentary elections in Georgia will also be discussed. 

The Assembly will determine its position on the modification of the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure – follow-up to Resolution 2319 (2020) on the complementary joint procedure between the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly in response to a serious violation by a member State of its statutory obligations. 

There have been requests for three urgent debates on :
-"The arrest and detention of Alexei Navalny in January 2021" .
-"The worsening situation in Belarus".
-"Freedom of expression (Article 10 of the ECHR) under threat by 'Big Tech' Companies" .

Three current affairs debate requests have also been submitted under the titles :
- “Prohibition of Russian and other national minorities languages in Ukraine”.
- “Unjustifiable delay in repatriation of the Armenian prisoners of war and other captives by Azerbaijani authorities as violation of the European International Human Rights Standards” .
- “The actual human rights situation in temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol during Covid-19 pandemics”.

The following will address the Assembly and answer questions:
- The European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders,
-the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany, Heiko Maas, within the framework of the German presidency of the Committee of Ministers, 
-The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić.

 

 

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