The meeting of the Standing Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will be held in Yerevan on May 31, 2013 under the Armenian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers.

PACE President Jean-Claude Mignon will hold high-level meetings with President of the Republic Serzh Sargsyan, Speaker of the National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan, and Minister for Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandian.

After the opening of the meeting by the PACE President, the Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly will address participants.

The parliamentarians will then hold an exchange of views with the Armenian Minister for Foreign Affairs, chairing the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for a six-month period beginning on 16 May. The discussions will focus on Armenia’s priorities during its Chairmanship and other issues in the framework of the Assembly’s ongoing political dialogue with the Committee of Ministers.

The themes on the agenda include promoting alternatives to imprisonment, parental leave as a way to foster gender equality, and budgets and priorities of the Council of Europe for the biennium 2014-2015.

Furthermore, a current affairs debate on “The Nagorno-Karabach conflict, 25 years later: the Council of Europe’s possibilities to promote reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan” has been requested by the PACE United European Left (UEL) Group. The holding of this debate – or any other debate requested within the requisite deadline – will only be confirmed at the opening of the meeting, during the adoption of the agenda.