Meeting in plenary session in Strasbourg this week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on Tuesday 27 June enabling it to dismiss its president and vice-presidents, as well the presidents and vice-presidents of its different committees, in cases of serious misconduct. This amendment to its rules of procedure was implemented in order to put an early end to the mandate of current PACE president Pedro Agramunt, who is from Spain and the ranks of the European People's Party.
Very strongly challenged last April for his official meeting with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in March, Agramunt had said during a hearing that he had made this visit solely as a member of the Spanish Senate. His argument did not wash, however, because as the report by Swiss Socialist Liliane Maury-Pasquier pointed out (which underpinned Tuesday's vote), representing an institution is to act responsibly from the first to last day of one's mandate. That means 24 hours per day, seven days per week – without any leeway for taking one's own initiative to go and meet a leader who openly violates human rights. The message was clear, and PACE approved it by 154 votes in favour, 30 against and 13 abstentions.
PACE is thus now equipped with a new procedure enabling it to challenge the institutional responsibility of its members holding an elected mandate and to dismiss them in the course of this mandate. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights countered the question about the retroactivity of these arrangements with regard to Agramunt's case as it only recognises the relevance of this argument in criminal cases.
"No holder of an elected office can claim they have accrued rights", Maury-Pasquier stated. "They gained a status that can be amended at any time", she said.
Under the reform that was adopted on Tuesday, PACE now has the power to dismiss its president with a two thirds majority of the vote, 24 or 48 hours after a motion of no confidence is tabled by a tenth of its members belonging to at least three political groups and ten national delegations of the 47 that make up the Council of Europe.
Dropped on all sides, including by the EPP, which argued for his departure with 38 votes in favour, 25 against and 2 abstentions on Monday evening, Agramunt could be dismissed as of Thursday. "It needs to be done as quickly as possible", the rapporteur said during the debates. "The Parliamentary Assembly is at a turning point in its history because its credibility has never been as shaken, it reputation never as damaged, and its image never as sullied".
Agramunt is also accused in a corruption case brought by the German NGO, European Stability Initiative. Like other former and current PACE members, he is suspected of having been bribed by Azerbaijan to hush up a report on political prisoners. The composition of an external ad hoc committee of inquiry which PACE decided to create was approved on Monday evening. Its findings are expected for the end of this week. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)