How can parliaments adjust their role as guarantors of stability and democratic legitimacy in emergency situations and how can the holding of elections be conceived in this context? Because of the pandemic, the Political Affairs and Democracy Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) held a videoconference hearing on this theme on Thursday morning, the outcomes of which will be used to prepare a report for presentation to and adoption by the Assembly.
The following people were invited: Oliver Kask, President of the Council for Democratic Elections of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and Judge in the Estonian Court of Appeal; Iain Cameron, Member of the Venice Commission and Professor at the University of Uppsala (Sweden); Professor Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit, Department of Political Science, University College London (United Kingdom).
The recording of this hearing will be available on the Council of Europe website (https://bit.ly/2ZRfb5n ) from Friday morning. Based on this hearing, a report will be drawn up on the subject of ‘Democracies and the Covid-19 pandemic’, which will be adopted by the Political Affairs Committee before being put to the vote of the Parliamentary Assembly at a future plenary session. The British Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger was appointed as a rapporteur this morning. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)