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The member of the RA NA delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Vladimir Vardanyan took part in the work of the Second part of the Annual (Spring) Session. The MP noted in his speech:

“Thank you, Mister Chair,

Honorable colleagues,

This year we are celebrating the 75^th anniversary of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the very existence of which crucially ameliorated the democratic environment of our continent.

The very notion of “Europe” is considered as a pattern of quality in all dimensions, including quality of life, quality of environment, quality of security, and for sure quality of democracy.

The privilege of being a member of the Council of Europe is an indication of high-quality democracy, full respect towards human rights and the rule of law. Meanwhile this privilege shouldn’t be considered as something given for granted, and each member should work hard on a daily basis to keep the level of democracy corresponding to our core values.

Democracy is a phenomenon which always pays challenges, especially today when we are witnessing wars, aggressions, disturbances, crises and instabilities all in and around Europe.

Here, in the Council of Europe, we should act with the understanding that democratic peace is the condition sine qua non for the building and maintaining of a democratic society based on the rule of law.

The democratic peace is also imperative for the better protection of human rights without any discrimination.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re living in the era of significant technological progress. The digital era drastically changed our life, opening new prospects and opportunities, but simultaneously bringing new challenges, threats and shortcomings.

We cannot and we should not reverse technological progress, but we have a common obligation to force technological developments to serve the promotion of democracy and therefore our mission is to provide democratic international legal background for regulation of technological developments, including development of artificial intelligence technologies.

Dear colleagues, during the last 75 years we have developed various successful models, models of democracy based on our core values. Nevertheless, we cannot deny the issue of backsliding of democracy in different member states.

Democratic backsliding is an alarming issue for our organization that we shouldn’t underestimate its impact towards all of us.

We should confront it actively and adopt a value-based rather than real-politic approach towards the democratic backsliding, treating equally all the countries backsliding from democracy.

Ladies and gentlemen, the aim of our organization is to promote building the real democracy, but not artificial, fake, nominal, or the other substitutes which used democracy labelled to hide autocratic regimes and their wrongdoings.

Hence, our role is to develop real mechanisms for the early prevention of the democratic backsliding and promotion of the real democracies all around Europe.

Thank you.”