AA16CR19ADD1

AS (2016) CR 19
Addendum 1
Provisional edition

2016 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(Third part)

REPORT

Nineteenth sitting

Monday, 20 June 2016 at 11.30 a.m.

Debate: Progress report of the Bureau and the Standing Committee

The following texts were submitted for inclusion in the official report by members who were present in the Chamber but were prevented by lack of time from delivering them.

Mr SABELLA (Palestine) – I wish to reiterate President Agramunt’s statement on incidents of terror that have touched the lives of innocent people and our parliamentary colleague Ms Cox. As I went over the progress report of the Bureau and the Standing Committee, it became crystal clear that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s engagement and reports not only reflect what is going on in Europe and within the Parliamentary Assembly itself, but touch on the broader Mediterranean neighbourhood.

As a delegate from Palestine, a Partner for Democracy, allow me to say that at this juncture we need to emphasise that the future of Europe, as well as that of its southern neighbours, is interdependent and that the values that permeate our work here should become shared not only in Europe, but also in the southern neighbourhood. The hope for our people in the south is to have stability and the end of the conflict in Syria and it is to have stability in Iraq, and the end of the occupation of Palestine and enabling it to exercise its rights as an independent State.

Let me here reiterate and express my thanks for what our colleague Tiny Kox said about the right of the recently released colleague Ms Khalida Jarrara to travel to Strasbourg to be part of the Palestinian delegation. This is important because it respects the right of parliamentarians to travel freely. While some may think that these issues are not relevant to Europe, events of recent months, with thousands of migrants and refugees, indicate that what happens in the southern Mediterranean is equally relevant to what goes on in Europe itself. We either work together or we will bear the difficult consequences and costs of continuing with our divisions.