speech by mr mevlÜt Çavusoglu

8/3/2019 SPEECH BY MR MEVLT AVUSOGLU

1/4

SPEECH BY MR MEVLT AVUOLU,

PRESIDENT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY,

AT THE 19TH SESSION OF THE CONGRESS OF LOCAL AND REGIONAL

AUTHORITIES OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

(Strasbourg, Wednesday 27 October 2010, around noon)

President, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

May I start by congratulating the Congress on the fresh start that it marks today: new

President and Bureau, new Presidents of its Chamber of Local Authorities and

Chamber of Regions; new structures and working methods.

To all of you, I wish to convey my warmest wishes for success in this difficult butchallenging task which we all face together - to continue to uphold the principles and

values of our Organisation, and to contribute to the constant strengthening of

democracy, human rights and rule of law in a fast changing Europe and a fast changing

world.

Mr Whitmore, you are very familiar with our Assembly, a genuine friend of it.

Congratulations on your election; we look forward to continuing our cooperation.

At the same time, I wish to congratulate Mr Yavuz Mildon, the outgoing President of

the Congress, and Mr Ian Micallef, the outgoing acting President of the Congress, fordoing an excellent job in leading the work of the Congress in these past couple of

years, which were extremely challenging for the Congress and for the Organisation as

a whole.

At your session, you are proceeding with some bold reforms and we do hope that the

new structure and working methods that you are adopting will contribute in a

qualitative way to the overall reform process of the Council of Europe. Our

Organisation needs to become more pro-active, more relevant and closer to the needs

and aspirations of our fellow Europeans. For all of us, it is not just a duty, but also a

political responsibility to make this process as meaningful and far-reaching aspossible.

Despite the reduction of the number of permanent committees to three, we hope that

the Congress will continue to work on matters such as environment and good

governance. Environmental matters are very important at local level, especially when

it comes to their implementation. That is also the case for protection of minorities, the

fight against discrimination, integration, cultural and religious dialogue, social rights

and sustainable development.


2/4


3/4

shall then pursue our mediating efforts between the different political forces in order to

help resolve the present political and constitutional deadlock.

In the South-Caucasus region we have also been encouraging positive moves aiming at

bringing a solution to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Here again, we do not

interfere with the OSCE Minsk Group but we try to encourage confidence-buildingmeasures, in particular among the parliamentary delegations of Armenia and

Azerbaijan.

Both in Armenia and Azerbaijan we still need to do a lot of work to improve public

confidence and consolidate the democratic process.

A word regarding my own country, Turkey. The positive result of the referendum on

constitutional change showed how strongly the Turkish people are attached to their

democratic rights and freedoms and to a future in Europe. This is a powerful signal on

the eve of Turkeys chairmanship of the Council of Europe.

Unfortunately the Assembly has put on hold its activities involving high-level contacts

with Belarus until a progress is seen towards the fulfilment of the one non-negotiable

condition for de-freezing our relations the death penalty. But we are trying not to cut

all contacts, also in the light of how the forthcoming presidential elections will be held.

Finally, we have also pursued our strategy of bringing non-member states closer to our

standards, particularly through the adoption of a new special status, called Partnership

for Democracy, for Parliaments of neighbouring non-member states. We received

official requests for this status from the Parliaments of Morocco and Palestine and theParliament of Kazakhstan is currently considering making a request.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

Our work is not only confined to specific member states facing specific challenges.

We must also use the fact of being together in order to find a common response to the

most important challenges that our democracies have to face.

One of the strongest concerns of the Assembly at present is the fact that, in a context

of economic crisis and rising unemployment, public security discourse is increasinglyused in conjunction with discriminatory language. It tends to link insecurity with

ethnic communities, including migrants, using them as scapegoats, as has been the

case recently with Roma.

We held an urgent debate on this topic earlier this month and we condemned the use ofsuch language as unacceptable in a democracy. We urged member states to strongly

endorse in their national law the Council of Europe instruments, standards and policies

prohibiting and preventing hate speech and discrimination. We should equally work

together to make sure that the governments of the Council of Europe member states

respect their political commitment expressed in the Strasbourg declaration that wasadopted last week at the high-level meeting on Roma in Strasbourg.


4/4

Another worrying trend which presents a direct challenge to democracy is the upsurge

of racism, xenophobia and all sorts of manifestations of intolerance against people of

different religious beliefs. These manifestations can be flagrant or subtle, but the result

is the same: discrimination, social alienation and exclusion, tension betweencommunities and fomentation of political extremism.

There are no universal recipes for fighting against extremism, but our first and

foremost task is to address its root causes. Resolute action against discrimination,

emphasis on civic education and inter-cultural as well as inter-religious dialogue,

involvement of civil society and non-governmental organisations especially those

representing segments of society which are excluded from ordinary channels in

consultation or decision-making processes are key instruments in reducing the

potential attraction of extremist groups and movements.

The Parliamentary Assembly intends to make its own contribution by holding in April

2011 a major debate on the religious dimension of inter-cultural dialogue.

Dear colleagues,

Finally, I would like to share with you a few words about one of the most important

challenges that lie ahead of us, the accession of the European Union to the European

Convention on Human Rights. Several important aspects of this process involve

directly our Assembly: in particular, the modalities under which the European

Parliament will participate in the process of electing judges to the European Court of

Human Rights. We have initiated a political dialogue with the European Parliament on

this issue.

Dear friends,

Let me express again my best wishes to all of you. I am sure that we shall pursue our

close co-operation. It would be useful to organise more joint meetings to work on

matters of common interest, which would increase our efficiency and also help us

avoid any duplication of work.

Thank you for your attention.

speech by mr mevlÜt Çavusoglu

Documents