President
The president of the Commission, since December 2009, is the former Secretary General Mr Gianni Buquicchio, whilst his predecessor, Mr Jan Erik Helgesen, Professor at the University of Oslo, is elected 1st Vice-President. The new Secretary General of the Commission, who is the head of the Commission's secretariat at the Council of Europe's headquarters in Strasbourg, France, is Mr Thomas Markert.
The main focus of the work of the Venice Commission is on draft constitutions and constitutional amendments but the Commission also covers para-constitutional law, i.e. laws which are close to the Constitution, such as minority legislation or electoral law.
Requests for opinions come from the participating states and the organs of the Council of Europe or international organisations or bodies participating in the Venice Commission’s work. The opinions adopted by the Commission are not binding but are mostly followed by member states.
The areas of the Commission's activities are as follows:
Read more about this topic: Venice Commission
Famous quotes containing the word president:
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)
“On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“How much would it cost you to stand at the wrong end of a shooting gallery?”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, Huxley College president to con artist Baravelli (Chico Marx)