06/08/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 10 August, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will celebrate its 60th anniversary. To commemorate the inaugural session of what was still referred to as the Consultative Assembly, an event has been organised in the Great Hall of the University of Strasbourg, where the first meeting was held. A call to the “citizens of Europe” will be launched at the event after a number of speakers remember that day. Paul Collowald, a young reporter with the Nouvel Alsacien at the time, will recall how the first meeting unfolded, the election of Paul-Henri Spaak as Chairman of the Assembly and the meeting on the place Kléber during which Winston Churchill, addressing the enthusiastic crowd in French, drew applause when he said that the city had been so often wounded by history and wars in the past, and he hoped that the Council of Europe's consultative assembly which had just been formed would one day become the European Parliament. (O.J./transl.rt)