Georgian MP Tedo Japaridze elected as PACE vice president

A member of the Parliament of Georgia has been elected as a vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

Georgian majority MP Tedo Japaridze was elected as one of 20 vice presidents elected at the opening of the PACE Winter plenary session today in Strasbourg, France.

Japaridze currently leads the Foreign Relations Committee in the Georgian legislative body. 

Twenty PACE vice presidents are annually elected at the beginning of an ordinary session and remain in office until the opening of the next session, but a vice president whose delegation is renewed in the course of a session does not remain in office.

Majority, Georgian Dream (GD) coalition MP Tedo Japaridze. 

This afternoon Spaniard Pedro Agramunt, from the European People’s Party (EPP), was elected as PACE president for a mandate of one year, renewable once.

He succeeded Anne Brasseur who had occupied the post since January 2014. Agramunt is the fourth Spaniard to take up this post and has become the Assembly’s 28th president.

The Georgian delegation composed of majority and minority representatives will remain in Strasbourg, until January 29 to attend the PACE Winter plenary sessions.  The delegation arrived in France at the PACE headquarters early today. 

The PACE is one of two statutory organs of the Council of Europe. It is an international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law. It also oversees the European Court of Human Rights, monitors whether states keep their promises and demands answers from presidents and prime ministers. It can also recommend sanctions, stated the PACE website.

PACE is made up of 324 parliamentarians from the national parliaments of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states and generally meets four times a year for week-long plenary sessions in Strasbourg.