PACE Spring Session focuses on human rights
Head of the Estonian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Kadri Tali and members of the delegation Eerik-Niiles Kross and Aleksei Jevgrafov participate in the spring plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
The agenda of the session includes debates on violence and hate speech against politicians, on protecting freedom of religion and belief, on the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, and on guidelines to counter social dumping and labour exploitation. The issues relating to improving the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, promoting the culture of consent, and copyright enforcement in the artificial intelligence environment will also be discussed.
Head of the Estonian delegation Kadri Tali said that it was important to ensure that human rights were explicitly included in national legislation and were also implemented in actual political and social contexts. “The discussion of these issues at the sessions of the Parliamentary Assembly must remain consistently on the agenda,” Tali added.
Speaking before the Assembly, member of the Estonian delegation Eerik-Niiles Kross called on countries to join the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The agreement on the establishment of the special tribunal for Russia’s crimes of aggression was signed in June 2025. By now, 19 countries have joined the initiative. Kross also reminded his colleagues that there were still more than 20,000 Ukrainian children in Russian captivity, but not enough progress had been made in helping them home. “We promised each other that we would create an international mechanism on the return of the children. … We haven’t. We have not even started work on this. So I really encourage us to do more.” he said.
At today’s sitting of the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the first working meeting of the Network of Parliamentarians to Promote the Implementation of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights was held.
Tomorrow, Eerik-Niiles Kross will open an exhibition on the fate of women political prisoners in Russia.
Riigikogu Press Service
Merje Meisalu
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