Following an 11-month inquiry, European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, issued on 13 February a recommendation relating to the transparency of the Council legislative process. As Mrs O’Reilly puts it: “EU citizens have a treaty-based right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Citizens cannot properly exercise this right unless the EU legislative process is sufficiently open to allow citizens to
The meeting held in the Vatican on 5 February between Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pope Francis represented a propaganda event useful to improve the heavily deteriorated international image of the Turkish head of state. Erdoğan seized the common view with the Vatican on the very sensitive issue of the status of Jerusalem in order to cast his positive
The International Criminal Tribunal has sentenced the former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladić to life imprisonment for the crimes committed during the bloody conflict in former Yugoslavia in 1990s. Mladić was found guilty of ten out of eleven counts of indictments including the genocide of Srebrenica occurred on 11 July 1995 where 8372 men and teenagers were massacred. This sentence
The European Parliament on November 15, 2017 adopted in plenary session a resolution on the Rule of Law and democracy in Poland. The resolution was adopted with 438 votes in favor, 152 against and 71 abstentions, foreseeing the launch of a mechanism provided in Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, for the imposition of EU sanctions against Poland.The
“We had no instructions” senior Tory MP and former Justice Minister Ken Clarke said on Wednesday, November 15, in a debate on Brexit on the floor of the House of Commons. The British public was not the only one left in the dark. Even MPs had no instructions, given that a proper debate over the options and the consequences of the United
London, 13 June 2017 Matteo Angioli: On 13th May 2017 you made a speech on the floor of the House of Lords on Brexit in which you said that we need to be careful on the way we go about referendums because of the view that the will of the people is sacrosanct. The referendum should not compromise, or even replace, parliamentary
Brexit, the vote in Great Britain and the right to know* The national elections in the UK are already upon us. These elections will be central to handling the issue of Brexit: will the next government take an even harder negotiating posture with Brussels, or will it show flexibility to get the most out of Brussels? The stakes are high:
The possible reinstatement of capital punishment in Turkey would be the red line not to be crossed. It would spell the end of the EU accession process that has already been frozen. None of the values underlying the construction of Europe can justify the relativisation of human life, accepting a justice that kills. Turkey, as a member of the Council
On Monday 10 April, GCRL President Giulio Terzi intervened in a conference organized at the Turkish Embassy in Rome on the issues of populism, Islam and the Rule of Law. President Terzi stressed the fundamental role of the universality of human rights and the rule of law globally. He also dwelled upon the very delicate historical moment that Turkey is