During the 25-27th of January, I had the opportunity to take part in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) which is organized by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Thank you to Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), for giving International Federation of Liberal Youth (IFLRY) the chance to attend PACE with a representative.

As a guest invited by the ALDE group, I assisted in their meetings and helped them with some of the practical arrangements. At the ALDE meeting they prepared their spokespersons of the group to the Parliamentary Assembly session, had elections to several ALDE committees, election for Vice-Chairpersons and had current affairs debates and discussions.

The agenda in the Parliamentary Assembly was focus on several elections where a new president was elect as well as a judge to the European Court of Human Rights. Since the new president of the Parliamentary Assembly Mevlüt Çavusoglu  was elected there were many interesting press conferences where the new president spoke about how he works in the future.

I also had the opportunity to visit the session where the situation in Middle East was discussed. It was interesting as representatives from Palestine and Israel attended and gave their view about the conflict. I also attended the session when communication from the Committee of Ministers to the Parliamentary Assembly was presented. I attend as well some of the meetings of the conference of INGOs where they discussed a three-year framework programme in the Russian Federation and discussed the adoption of priorities of the Conference of INGO.

I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to visit PACE. I learned a lot and met politicians, journalists, as well as staff at the Council of Europe, administrators and other interns from all over Europe. Thank you IFLRY and ALDE.

Elin Blomqvist
Intern IFLRY’s office