Since April 2014, the Russian delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has been refusing to take a seat at the plenary sessions. An “exchange of views with representatives from the Russian Parliament” organised during a meeting of the PACE Permanent Commission on Friday 10 March in Madrid helped clarify the points of disagreement and, perhaps, move forward towards a resolution of the conflict.
The bone of contention involves the suspension of this delegation’s powers. PACE voted for this suspension on 10 April 2014, following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. Russian parliamentarians immediately left the assembly and have never returned to it.
According to representatives from the Duma, speaking in Madrid, there is only one amendment to the PACE regulation that will help find “a way out of this impasse”. Konstantin Kosatchev, the Chairperson of the Duma foreign affairs committee, who led the Russian delegation at the PACE between 2004 – 2012, explained that currently this regulation allows for “abuses to be committed”. He added that, “at a political level, it is unacceptable that the rights and powers of delegation are withdrawn from it through a vote that does not represent the majority of the assembly”. The vote in April 2014 involved 189 delegates out of the 324 members of the PACE. 145 of them voted in favour of suspending the powers of the Russian delegation, 21 rejected it and 22 abstained.
Konstantin Kosatchev affirmed that he was there “at the invitation” of Pedro Agramunt, the President of the PACE and that he “will not be begging to return” but was ready for “a dialogue based on mutual respect” so that they could develop “a roadmap to amend the regulation”.
Pedro Agramunt emphasised that he had spent “A lot of time and effort on maintaining a dialogue with the Russian Parliament” since his election as the head of PACE in January 2016. He is clearly prepared to pursue this approach and has announced new exchanges of views during the next plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Community of Independent States in Saint Petersburg on 27 March next. He also explained that, “the PACE Committee on political questions has also set up a subcommittee that will take part in these meetings”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)