Approving a report by Gala Veldhoen (Netherlands, SOC), the Assembly said the law – which is currently being challenged before Israel’s Supreme Court – represented “a clear setback in Israel’s long-standing stance on the use of the death penalty” and was “incompatible with the values of the Council of Europe”.

The compatibility of Israel’s actions with the requirements attached to the Knesset’s observer status with the Assembly should therefore be “kept under careful review”, the Assembly said. A separate report on the suspension of the observer status is currently under consideration by the Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee.

As part of the debate, the Assembly heard from Antoinette Chahine, who spent five years on death row in Lebanon after facing torture to sign a false confession. “I paid with my blood, I paid with my body” she told the parliamentarians, recounting how her experience of torture had inspired her to work against the death penalty after she was exonerated and freed.

Barbara Lochbihler, commissioner at the International Commission against the Death Penalty, noted the paradox that while a greater number of countries are against abolition, the number of individual executions is rising: “We are simultaneously witnessing the most progress, and the most executions, in a generation.”

In its resolution, the Assembly reaffirmed the Council of Europe’s stance against capital punishment in all circumstances and all places, noting that any reintroduction of the death penalty by a Council of Europe member state would be incompatible with membership.

It encouraged the parliaments of Jordan and Palestine, which have “partner for democracy” status with PACE, to work towards abolishing the death penalty in law, bearing in mind the absence of executions in both countries for a number of years, and welcomed “positive steps” recently taken by Morocco, whose parliament also holds this status.

The Assembly also condemned ongoing executions in Belarus — currently the only country in Europe to carry out capital punishment – and called on the US and Japan, Council of Europe observer states, to immediately introduce moratoria on executions, commute sentences and end cruel methods of execution.

The Council of Europe and the Assembly will contribute to the upcoming World Congress against the Death Penalty to be held in Paris in June 2026, including by sharing their experience of progressively making Europe a death penalty-free continent.