Council of Europe: Russia regains voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly | Currently Europe | '
After several hours of unusually passionate debate, 118 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted to change their rules of procedure, paving the way for Russia to remain in the pan-European organization. 62 Members voted against and ten abstained.
Despite fierce protests, especially from Ukrainian MPs, the Assembly bowed to Russia's demands. Moscow has repeatedly threatened to leave the Council of Europe in the past few months in the event that the sanctions against the 18 Russian members – including the withdrawal of voting rights – will be maintained.
The new legislation, which has now been approved, stipulates that the parliamentary assembly will no longer be able to impose sanctions unilaterally in the future, but only in consultation with the Committee of Ministers, which includes the foreign ministers of the 47 Council of Europe countries. This should give the Russian delegation their rights back, as demanded by Moscow. If Moscow makes these concessions, Russian MPs could return to the Assembly on Tuesday, in time for Wednesday's election of a new Secretary-General of the Organization.
Lively verbal combats
In the assembly, supporters and opponents of the new rules fought for many hours. The aim is to end the conflict that has been going on for years with Russia, said the rapporteur, the Belgian socialist Petra de Sutter. Also, the SPD MP Frank Schwabe pleaded for Russia to remain in the Council of Europe. More than 140 million people in Russia and the occupied territories needed the protective umbrella of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Court.
Violent opposition came as expected from deputies from Ukraine. Since the annexation of Crimea five years ago, the parliamentary assembly has in several resolutions denounced the Russian actions in Ukraine, but also serious human rights violations in Russia, stressed the Conservative Oleksii Goncharenko. Moscow ignored all resolutions. "And what do we do? We give in to Russian blackmail and change our rules." His compatriot Liashko Oleh spoke of a "festival of hypocrisy". The Assembly is rolling out the red carpet for the "Russian aggressor".
Russian boycott
The Russian deputies boycott the work of the Assembly since they were deprived of their voting rights in April 2014 because of the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea. At that time, they were also excluded from top posts in the assembly and certain missions, such as election observation. In June 2017, Moscow stopped paying its membership fees of around 33 million euros per year. The Council of Europe thus lacks around nine percent of its annual budget.
The statute threatens a country's exclusion if it has not paid any contributions for two years. To prevent this, the Foreign Ministers of the 47 countries of the European Union had made concessions to Moscow at a meeting in Helsinki on 17 May, including the prospect of an end to the sanctions.
The Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, is the largest state organization on the European continent. It was founded in May 1949, four years after the end of World War II. Today it counts 47 member states, all European states with the exception of Belarus. Russia was admitted to the state organization in 1996. The parliamentary assembly includes 318 national MPs from the Council of Europe countries. The assembly meets four times a year in Strasbourg. Together with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Council is responsible for the respect of human rights of around 830 million citizens in the member states.
kle / qu (afp, dpa)
ليست هناك تعليقات