At the beginning of the 2018 ordinary session on Monday 22 January, Italian Socialist Michele Nicoletti, the only candidate for the post of President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), was automatically elected.
Nicoletti takes over from Stella Kyriakidès of Cyprus, who was elected last October as interim President following the resignation of Spain’s Pedro Agramunt, marking the end of a long crisis sparked by the latter’s meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (see EUROPE 11880).
As the Presidency is governed by a rotational agreement between political groups, Kyriakidès finished the mandate to be held by Agramunt's European People’s Party (PPP), but was unable to stand as a candidate herself, as the agreement provides for the baton to be passed to a Socialist.
Nicoletti, who has been elected for a term of one-year renewable once, will steer the destiny of an Assembly in crisis in many ways. Having faced allegations of corruption, it has already instituted measures including a change of its operational rules and the creation of an external committee of investigation, which will report at the end of 2018.
In particular, however, tensions with Moscow have been making waves for years and are showing no signs of abating, as demonstrated by the fact that during the examination of the powers of the national delegations on Monday morning, PACE had to take note of the absence of an application regarding Russia. Moscow is therefore not moving from the attitude it adopted in April 2014, when the 18 members of its delegation walked out of the Assembly following the suspension of their voting rights, which was decided upon as a response to the annexation of Crimea.
This stalemate, which has proven insurmountable, has been accentuated by financial tit for tat. In June 2017, Russia announced its intention to suspend the payment of €33 million corresponding to the final instalment of its contribution to the 2017 budget of the Council of Europe (see EUROPE 11821). Currently, there are no indications that it will pay the first instalment of its share of the 2018 budget, which is due in February.
In view of the Russian situation, PACE has decided to start a reflection on its statutes. The creation of an ad hoc committee made up of some 60 parliamentarians was ratified by the plenary session on Monday and it will hold its first meeting this Tuesday. This committee, whose 60 members will include the President of PACE, the heads of national delegations and committee chairs, will also have two representatives of the Russian Federation: Pyotr Tolstoy, vice-President of the Duma, and Konstantin Kossatchev, president of the foreign affairs committee of the Council of the Russian Federation.
For PACE, this will be the first step towards a procedure to harmonise the rules governing the participation and representation of the member states, as recommended by a report from October of last year, defended by Nicoletti. In this text, the new PACE President flagged up the current inconsistencies between the two ruling bodies of the Council of Europe - PACE and the Committee of Minister - as the Russian Federation is absent from the former, but continues to take its seat in the latter.
Nicoletti argues that this situation is detrimental to the organisation’s overall influence and that this dossier is a priority. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)