Why should Russia participate in CE and PACE in general? This was decided back in 1996, when Russia joined the Council of Europe after a number of post-Soviet countries, including the Baltic ones. Such a fashion was then: somewhere to enter. In 1998, the Russian parliament ratified the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), and thereby the Russian Federation finally embarked on the path of “correction” and “cleansing” of the Soviet past. And everything was fine until Russia firmly declared national sovereignty through the mouth of President Vladimir Putin in Munich in 2007 at the historic Security Conference.
Almost immediately, PACE, like the Council of Europe and the ECHR, turned into an instrument of direct pressure on Russian politics. And in 2014, after the well-known events with the return of Crimea to their native harbor, the delegation of Russian parliamentarians in PACE was completely deprived of their words, and the decisions of the ECHR began to have a strongly anti-Russian character. Then a number of so-called unsystematic oppositionists began to accelerate through the decisions of this court to demand compensation for doubtful violations of rights from the Russian budget. While thousands of lawsuits by Russian (and not only Russian) citizens for years have been waiting in line for consideration on the merits.
So, at a certain moment a reasonable question arose: why do we need this PACE and this CE with its biased ECHR?
To begin with, by asking this question, the Russian parliament has suspended the payment of contributions to the Council of Europe since 2017. However, in the summer of 2018, initiative consultations and visits by European officials to Moscow began with assurances that PACE will try to regain the full authority of the Russian delegation in order to maintain dialogue on important topical issues on the European agenda. Already in mid-2019, the Russian delegation returned to PACE and its powers and rights were confirmed.
According to all the regulations of this international organization, the composition of the delegation and the size of contributions imply one of the positions of the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly. At the end of last year, Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs, was nominated by Russia for this post. However, he did not have enough votes to be elected. According to experts, the European bureaucrats of the Council of Europe cannot forgive the parliamentarian for a brilliant gambit to return Russia to this oldest European political platform on Russian conditions.
Yesterday, in the second round of voting, the head of the Russian delegation, vice-speaker of the State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy, was elected deputy chairman of PACE.
And later, most PACE members supported the resolution on the full powers of Russian parliamentarians without exceptions.
The day before, a group of limitroph countries - the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Georgia, which joined them (I am also a European country!) - presented Russia with a number of complaints as part of the discussion of constitutional amendments that began, in particular, the provisions on the primacy of international law and the priority of the Russian Constitution over any decisions of international organizations . Demanding from PACE that this time the Russian delegation, if they weren’t already deprived of the word, would at least be limited in authority.
So, the PACE monitoring committee, having examined all the circumstances of the case, said that it did not find a single reason not to ratify the powers of Russia. As a result, the adopted resolution, among other things, emphasizes the implementation by Russia of a number of PACE recommendations and notes the progress in the implementation of the Minsk agreements on settlement in the south-east of Ukraine.
Indeed, the new PACE chairman Hendrik Dams has taken a principled position, and this inspires some optimism regarding the development of an honest dialogue with Russian parliamentarians on this international platform.
Such metamorphoses in the European parliamentary community are associated not only with the transfer of contributions to the organization’s budget. It seems that at least in the minds of European deputies the picture is changing and there is an understanding of the importance of a close exchange of views, discussion of each other's positions is sincerely recognized as a vital necessity.
With the election of Peter Tolstoy, the Russian delegation receives legal representation in the Bureau of the Assembly and the opportunity to participate fully in shaping the agenda of the organization. PACE Vice-Chairmen not only conduct meetings and debates in the absence of a speaker, but also enter the PACE Bureau, which, in turn, forms the agenda of the assembly. “With each session, we are integrating deeper into PACE. I’m sure that the combination of the leadership of the delegation and the post of PACE Vice-Speaker will certainly benefit the advancement of Russian interests, our line, and the foreign policy projection of the Russian President’s agenda on the PACE’s platform, ”said the head of the Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
In turn, the newly elected PACE Vice-Speaker Peter Tolstoy noted that the Russian delegation intends not just to discuss, but to defend the position of the Russian Federation.
Well, we wish our parliamentarians good luck in this important matter. Obviously, the one who was able to convince the Russian leadership and society as a whole not to leave the European parliamentary platform forever was right. Alle a la Victoria!
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.