On April 21, 2015, Their Majesties King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium arrived in Strasbourg, France for a one-day visit.
The day began with a visit to the Council of Europe. Whilst there the reigning couple held a meeting with the Secretary General Council of Europe, Mr. Thorbjorn Jagland, as well as with the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Ms. Anne Brasseur.
Thereafter, Their Majesties attended a plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). According to the official website for PACE His Majesty gave a speech in which he:
“…called for the establishment and preservation of a decent society, expressing his regret at ‘too many situations in which men and women are not treated with dignity’. These shameful attitudes, which we were acquiring in particular when faced with the pressures of migration, were not just held by private individuals but also by institutions, he said, pointing to the recent tragedies in the Mediterranean.
[His Majesty went on to note that] in order to build and preserve a decent society, there was a need to ‘reconnect with our vision of human beings in their entirety’, namely independent individuals, free of any external interference, but at the same time receptive to others and the world around them, shaping themselves in a spirit of respect and tolerance.”
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Photo courtesy of Getty Images/F. Florin
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