SPEECH BY MR MEVLÜT ÇAVUŞOĞLU,

PRESIDENT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY,

FOR THORBJØRN JAGLAND, SECRETARY GENERAL

OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

(Strasbourg, Monday 24 January 2011, 4.00 P.M.)

Dear Secretary General,

Thank you for coming to the Assembly for your annual communication which, I believe, will be followed with great interest, bearing in mind the numerous challenging issues on which both you and the Assembly have been working in cooperation over the last months.

Let me mention the most outstanding ones: the reform of the Council of Europe and the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights. We greatly appreciate your personal efforts on all these essential issues for our Organisation, as well as the energy that you have deployed to strengthen cooperation with other major international organisations, in particular the European Union.

Over the past year, we have also had to seek appropriate answers to some worrying trends across Europe such as growing intolerance, racism and xenophobia. In this respect, I welcome the exemplary complementarity and cooperation between you and the Assembly on the Roma issue.

Dear Secretary General, we are aware that the greatest challenge before all of us now is the reform of our Organisation, which will ensure its viability and political relevance in a complex international environment.

I am pleased to declare that the Bureau of the Assembly this morning endorsed the report of its Ad Hoc committee on the Reform of the Assembly.

It will now be sent to committees, national delegations and political groups with the aim of adopting the report during the June part-session so that, after the necessary procedural adjustments, the reform could be put in place as from January next year.

Dear Secretary General, we all face a very challenging year ahead. I believe that dialogue, cooperation, political vision and courage are the key words that would ensure success of our undertakings, since we are accountable to 800 million people living in Europe. Please be assured of the Assembly’s support.

You have the floor.