Succeeding the Greek Theodoros Rousopoulos (EPP), the Austrian Socialist Petra Bayr was elected President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, at the opening of the session on Monday 26 January.
With 164 votes (out of 214 votes cast) she won the absolute majority required in the first round.
Support for her candidacy is in line with the rotation agreement between the Assembly’s political groups.
Excluded from this agreement, the ECPA group (European Conservatives, Patriots & Affiliates) put forward its own candidate: Sweden’s Victoria Tiblom.
She won only 50 votes against Petra Bayr.
The ECPA group had also requested an urgent debate entitled “Bringing Democracy back to our Assembly: an urgent call to reform the election procedure of the President of the Parliamentary Assembly”, which was not included when the agenda for the session was adopted.
Petra Bayr’s one-year term of office will be renewable once.
In her inaugural speech, the new President called for “closer and more strategic co-operation among all its bodies” between the Council of Europe’s statutory bodies in order to strengthen the organisation’s “visibility” and “political impact”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)