Former President

“At a time of great and dramatic challenges – from terrorism to migration, from poverty old and new to mistrust in representative institutions, from the re-emergence of racism and xenophobia to the desperate solitude of so many people – we must offer a response to nationalist and chauvinistic temptations to close ranks, to centrifugal pressures and to conflicts by reasserting the need for peace and justice on our continent.

The Heads of State and Government of all Council of Europe member states must reassert on the highest level their commitment to ensuring that the Council of Europe can be the ‘shared home’ of all, respecting the equal dignity, integrity and freedom of each member, along with the undertaking by all to remain true to the European Convention on Human Rights along with all the other conventions and to contribute faithfully to the life of the institution.

In performing this task, we must not cease openly denouncing any violation of human rights committed in any part of our continent and by any authority. There cannot and must not be any free zones. However, this defence of human rights will be even stronger if we are able to combine it with an ever increasing unity between our peoples.

We must tirelessly seek to emphasise what unites us”.

Michele Nicoletti

President of the Parliamentary Assembly

Biography

Michele Nicoletti (Trento, 1956)

Institutional Appointments

• Member of the Commissione Paritetica Stato-Regione Trentino Alto Adige, 2012 – present
• Member of the Italian Parliament (Camera dei Deputati), Foreign Affairs Committee, 2013 – present
• Member of the Italian Delegation at the PACE (Committees: Political Affairs, Migration, Monitoring, Rules and Procedures; other activities: Anticorruption Platform), 2013 – 2017
• Head of the Italian Delegation and Vicepresident of the PACE (2014 – 2017)
• Chair of the Socialist Group at the PACE (2016 – 2017)
• General Rapporteur of the High-level Conference of the Social Charter (Turin, October 2014)

Rapporteur on

• After Dublin: the urgent need for a real European asylum system
• Promoting integrity in governance to tackle political corruption
• Call for a Council of Europe Summit to defend and promote democratic security in Europe

Academic positions

• Full Professor of Political Philosophy,
• Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia & School of International Studies, University of Trento (Italy), 2001-present
• Associate Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Padova (Italy), 1999-2001
• Assistant Professor of Moral and Theoretical Philosophy, University of Padova (Italy), 1991-1999

Research appointments        

• Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at the University of Notre Dame, IN, Usa (January-May 2007)
• Visiting Fellowships: Exeter (2003), St. Andrews (August 2001), Cork (July 1999), KU Leuven (1999), Freiburg i.B. (1994)

List of Publications

• See here