II SÉRIE-D — NÚMERO 23

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international community: – Democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

The obsolescence of the present military pact became notorious. We have to resist the calls asking for

growing investments in the military industry and to start building a new security system. National budgets have

to appease the inequalities growing in our democratic societies and to foster generous co-operation between

the rich and the poor countries. Definitely, the strategic autonomy of Europe demands a fierce apology of

universal disarmament and the destruction of all the nuclear weapons.

We welcome enthusiastically the sanctions against the Russian oligarchs – well aware that they were born

under western complicity! – and we need also to promote stricter transparency in the global finance

transactions, namely, to ban tax havens and forbid the services offered by a deregulated banking system to

notorious international criminals.

Systematic violations of the Public International Law have increased astonishingly everywhere for the last

30 years. A new security system is urgently needed to the prevention of war, improved co-operation for

sustainable development, and guarantee of fundamental rights. Weapons or the use of force cannot promote

democracy and Human Dignity.

The Council of Europe must assume a more efficient role with effective instruments to scrutinise

democracies, to denounce and to prosecute human rights infringements.

The world is not black and white. On the contrary, it is vividly coloured by human diversity and too big and

rich to accept the submission to any imperialistic ambitions. Thank you very much. PEACE!

Intervenção do Deputado Pedro Cegonho (PS)

«What's the point of the war?

Why, oh why can't people live together peacefully?

Why all this destruction?»

This sentence was written on May 3, 1944 by Anne Frank

It should not be possible for a people of Europe to go again through the horror of war, death and

destruction.

It should not be possible for a people of Europe to go again through the despair of separated families, lost

futures and irreconcilable hatreds.

All of us here call for stop the conflict and ask for diplomacy and ethics to prevail.

We are also concerned about the world heritage of cities like Kiev and Odessa.

Museum walls are empty, cellars are filled with packaged works of art. Saving art is the second priority after

saving lives because heritage is also based on the conviction of a unique cultural identity of Ukraine.

That's why we want to remember the courage and risk that Ukrainian artists, museum directors and

technicians are taking to protect the heritage. Heritage that belongs not only to Ukraine but also to all humanity.

For more than six years I worked with the Ukrainian delegation to the Congress of Local and Regional