Venice Commission :: Council of Europe

At its 84th plenary session, the Commission

- held an exchange of views with Ms Margarita Popova, Minister of Justice of Bulgaria, and adopted the opinion on the amendments to the draft Act on Forfeiture in favour of the State of Illegally acquired assets of Bulgaria;

- held an exchange of views with Mr Anastas Anastasov, Vice-President of the National Assembly of Bulgaria, and decided, at the request of the rapporteurs, to postpone the examination of the draft opinion on the draft law amending the law on judicial power and the draft law amending the criminal procedure code of Bulgaria;

- adopted the Amicus curiae brief for the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the compatibility with international standards of certain provisions relating to local elections and the statute of the City of Mostar;

- held an exchange of views with Mr Akaki Minashvili and Mr Pavle Kublashvili, members of the Parliament of Georgia, and adopted the opinion on the draft constitutional law on changes and amendments to the Constitution of Georgia;

- asked its President to send a letter to the President of Kyrgyzstan in order to express its deep concern with the opening of criminal investigations against former Constitutional Court judges on account of decisions previously taken by the Constitutional Court;

- adopted the joint opinion by the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR on the Law on Public Assembly of Serbia;

- held an exchange of views with Ms Mária Krasnohorská, Director General for Global Challenges, Human Rights, UN and International Organisations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic, and adopted the opinion on the Act on State Language of the Slovak Republic;

- held an exchange of views with representatives of the Constitutional Review Committee of the Parliament of South Africa, on the procedure of review of the Constitution of South Africa;

- held an exchange of views with Mr Sadullah Ergin, Minister of Justice of Turkey on the planned implementation of the constitutional referendum and the Commission’s role in this respect;

- held an exchange of views with Mr Yuriy Prytyka, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine, and with Mr Pylypenko, member of parliament, and adopted the opinion on the Law on the judicial system and the status of judges and the opinion on the Law on the prevention of abuse of the right to appeal, both prepared jointly with the Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs of the Council of Europe;

- adopted the joint opinion by the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR on the draft law on Freedom of Assembly of Ukraine;

- was informed on the request from the Monitoring Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly to prepare an opinion on the constitutional situation in Ukraine, following the recent decision of the Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the law of 2004 which had brought about constitutional amendments;

- adopted the joint OSCE/ODIHR – Venice Commission Guidelines on Political Parties;

- adopted the Report on the role of the opposition, prepared at the request of the Parliamentary Assembly;

- adopted the report on timeline and inventory of political criteria for assessing an election, previously adopted by the Council for Democratic Elections;

- adopted the Interpretative Declaration of the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters with respect to the participation of people with disabilities in elections, previously adopted by the Council for Democratic Elections, as amended;

- was informed of the appointment of a new associate member on behalf of Belarus and, in the light of a request for an opinion on the law constitutional Court proceedings, decided to invite him to participate in the forthcoming Plenary Sessions;

- was informed by Mr Mauricio Gonzalez Cuervo, President of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, about the constitutional situation in his country and possible co-operation with the Commission;

- was informed that the reply of the authorities of Italy concerning possible amendments to the laws Gasparri and Frattini subsequent to the Commission’s opinion of 2004 had been sent to the Parliamentary Assembly;

- was informed on follow-up to the Amicus Curiae Brief for the Constitutional Court of Moldova on the Interpretation of Articles 78.5 and 85.3 of the Constitution of Moldova and the Opinion on the draft law on Prohibition of Discrimination of Montenegro;

- was informed about a request for an Amicus curiae brief by the Constitutional Court of “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” on amendments to the system of salaries and remunerations of elected and appointed officials;

- postponed the examination of the draft Report on Individual Access to Constitutional Justice and invited all members to inform the Secretariat about the accuracy of the report in relation to their own country before 15 November 2010;

- adopted a set of proposals concerning its working methods, prepared by the Sub-commission on procedural matters, to be implemented as of next year, and decided that the provisional composition of the Scientific Council will be as follows: Mr Helgesen, Mr Buquicchio, Ms Flanagan, Mr Paczolay, Mr Dimitrijevic, Mr Esanu, Mr Hoffmann-Riem, Mr van Dijk and Mr Jowell;

- held an exchange of views with representatives of the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe;

- fixed the dates of the next sessions as follows: 17-18 December 2010; 25-26 March 2011; 17-18 June 2011; 14-15 October 2011 and 16-17 December 2011.

All the opinions are public after the adoption and are available on the website of the Venice Commission after the session ( cf. " Recent documents)

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