How can we celebrate the European   Democracy Week opening  today,  while many of those who want to join our democracies die every day so close to our shores ? It took so many deaths till  finally  European peoples and governments are moved !
Driven by poverty, political, racial, tribal or religious persecution - thousands of men, women and children take the greatest  risks  to try to survive or live better.

Many of our NGOs are committed with migrants and survivors of disasters, in Lampedusa on other shores. The Council of Europe cannot  stand by and do nothing to prevent such tragedies which cannot be left under the sole responsibility of the gateway cities of Europe, as courageous as they are.

We demand respect for the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights so that the interceptions thrown by Frontex, the '' European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders", go along with measures of effective rescue, consistent with human rights and the rights of refugees. Physical strength, in case of shipwreck, must not be the only criterion of admission on our soil !

We call for a review of international treaties on the rights of refugees

We invite the European Union and the Council of Europe Member States to foster a common and effective cooperation and asylum policy, and to intensify the fight against the criminal activity of traffickers and smugglers.

We urge all colleagues to relay this call to parliamentarians and national and local governments of the 47 Member States of the Council of Europe.

Anne -Marie Chavanon             Israel Mensah              Vera John Mikolajewski
           President                         Vice-President                    Vice-President          

Above, Amnesty international campaign

EU background notes
Articles 77-80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Council Directives 2009/50/EC , 2004/83/EC, 2003/9/EC and 2001/55/EC of July 20, 2001 ; Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003

Council of Europe recent texts
Asylum seekers and refugees: sharing responsibilities in Europe
 Doc. 12630, report of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population, rapporteur: Mr Chope). Text adopted by the Assembly on 21 June 2011 (22nd Sitting).
Resolution 1820 (2011)1
 Recommendation 1973 (2011).

 The Committee actively participated in the 13th Meeting of the Council of Europe Workshops for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention, which was held in Cetinje, Montenegro, on 2-3 October 2013.
The main theme of the meeting was: "Territories of the future: landscape identification and assessment, an exercise in democracy."

Anne-Marie CHAVANON, president of the Committee was pleased, on behalf of NGOs, that these workshops be held "in a country with multiple identities: cultural, religious, ethnic and certainly landscape identities crossing five borders, uniting Montenegro to its neighbours (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania), a country of extreme complexity, which wanted to place in the wake but also the prospect of Europe "

Luc-Emile Bouche-Florin, Honorary President of the NGO, presented the landscape dimension and the role of civil society in the Charter of European urban planning of the European Council of Town Planners (CEU)

Dirk Gotzman, director of the NGO Civilscape presented the action taken by a group of NGO  named "Alliance " to associate the European Landscape Convention in the European Year of citizen

While the European Landscape Convention considers the landscape, "as perceived by the people," the Aarhus Convention calls understandable information at a time when the project is still reversible, most of the time, the presentation of highly technical projects does not allow this exercise in democracy. New technologies have to be promoted at all levels.