Over 50 thousand people coming by sea to the Spanish, Greek, Italian and Maltese coasts in 2007 alone: the "boat people" will be the focus of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), whose permanent commission will meet in Madrid on November 28th to tackle this issue. The meeting will coincide with Spain taking the presidency of the CoE over from Sweden for the next six months (November-May 2009). The meeting of the Commission will be opened by Lluís Maria de Puig, president of PACE, and will include an exchange of opinions with Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and current president of the Council of Europe. Then, it will discuss a special report on "boat people" that has been drawn up by Danish MEP Morten Ostergaard: the document invites the European Governments to "submit minimum shared rules for receiving boat people in all countries". From 1st to 3rd December, the Spanish presidency will be at the Congress of local and regional powers of the CoE in Strasbourg, to discuss the geographical consequences of the Russian-Georgian conflict, the failure to appoint three mayors (burgomasters) in Belgium, the situation of language minorities in Latvia, and democracy in Armenia.
