The President of the National Assembly Tsetska Tsacheva had talks with the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Pedro Agramunt. They met before the beginning of the second day of the European Conference of the Presidents of Parliament in Strasbourg, organized by PACE.
The theme of the forum was “Mobilisation of Parliaments against hate, for inclusive and non-racist societies”. The key speakers are Norbert Lammert, Speaker of the German Bundestag, and Anne Brasseur, Ambassador of the Council of Europe’s “No Hate Speech” movement.   

The President of Parliament Tsetska Tsacheva congratulated Pedro Agramunt on the excellent organisation of the forum and noted that the themes in the conference were extremely topical in these hard times for Europe and all the more for Bulgaria as an external border of EU. Addressing contemporary challenges requires common and coordinated efforts and action by all European governments and parliaments, she added.

Tsetska Tsacheva thanked Pedro Agramunt for his personal support to  the 2015 initiative of the Bulgarian Delegation to PACE, aimed to reaffirm at highest level the principles of European unity and cooperation by calling the Fourth Meeting of the heads of state and the heads of government of the Council of Europe member states.

We highly appreciate your proposal, this is a wonderful idea, Pedro Agramunt said. He added that they were working on that initiative and expressed belief that it would be implemented because Europe needed it.  

During the meeting the President of the National Assembly also touched upon the matter on the continuing post-monitoring of Bulgaria by PACE. Although with the adoption of the latest resolution of the Assembly in 2013 on the post-monitoring of Bulgaria the areas of monitoring were limited to three, the continuing monitoring is very disturbing for us, in particular given the fact that Bulgaria is the only EU Member State subject to such monitoring, Tsetska Tsacheva noted. In her view, if progress in these areas is objectively assessed, the post-monitoring should end. We expect our efforts and achievements to be appreciated and to receive a more concrete prospect for completing the post-monitoring dialogue, the President of Parliament added.