Brussels, 26/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - At the end of a press briefing towards the end of Sunday morning on 25 January, with Sergey Naryshkin, the president of the Russian Duma, Anne Brasseur, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), stated “as you have seen there are barely any points at all on which we are able to agree”. The atmosphere during this last chance discussion organised just before the opening of the 2015 PACE session, was glacial.
The chilly atmosphere was down to the fact that the powers of the Russian delegation have been suspended since April 2014, as a way of expressing the Assembly's disapproval of the annexation of the Crimea by Russia. Having had their right to vote denied, as well as the right to be represented in the leading bodies of the PACE or participate in the election observation missions, the 18 Russian members (including Sergey Naryshkin) noisily slammed the door after the vote and did not reappear in any of the plenaries until this January session, where the powers of all the different national delegations are systematically submitted for endorsement.
It subsequently came as no surprise that on Monday morning, the powers of the Russian delegation were once again subject to question by at least 30 parliamentarians from five different political groupings. The procedure therefore again led to the activation of the disputes committee, which is in charge of drafting a report on developments in the situation in the Crimea. This text will be debated and put to the vote on Wednesday evening and is expected to lead to sanctions against the Russian delegation being extended.
Sergey Naryshkin believes that such a decision would effectively mean Russia being discriminated against and which “would not comply with international law and would be contrary to human rights”. On Sunday evening, his tone appeared intransigent, although he did not go as far as repeating the ideas formulated last Wednesday in the Russian newspaper, Kommersant, in which he had announced that if the vote went against Russia, the Russian delegation would leave the PACE for a least a year and it could possibly step down from the Council of Europe (COE) in 2016.
The situation is therefore extremely fraught during this winter PACE session. Perspectives regarding the annexation of the Crimea are diametrically opposed between Strasbourg and Moscow. The former denounces the fact that international law has been breached, while the latter says that the annexation was based on a democratic referendum.
It is difficult to see a way out of this impasse, just as it is impossible to see any chance of dialogue on the subject of the situation regarding Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian army pilot, member of her country's parliament and the PACE. Anne Brasseur emphasised that “she is imprisoned in Russia, despite there not having been any request to have her diplomatic immunity lifted, which does not comply with our regulation”. Brasseur called for everything to be done to get the pilot's release. Sergey Naryshkin said “She is suspected of being involved in a serious crime, linked to the murder of two Russian journalists in Ukraine last June”. He even made a comparison between her action and the murders of Charlie Hebdo, as if they had been MEPs at Strasbourg. (VL)