The Russians, who have been absent from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for 5 years, made a remarkable return to it on Tuesday morning. There were eighteen of them, appointed by the Duma and led by their leader, Piotr Tolstoy. However, it will be necessary to wait until Wednesday to find out if this return can be accepted.
After the marathon vote on a resolution drafted under the aegis of Belgian Petra De Sutter and adopted last night (EUROPE 12281/8), after 9 hours of heated debate, a solution seemed to have been found: thanks to a derogation, the Russians would be able to present the credentials of a new delegation on Tuesday and participate in the election of the new Secretary General of the Council of Europe on Wednesday. Not to mention that they could welcome the start of the work on a new set of rules for the assembly, excluding the possibility that the assembly could, on its own initiative, suspend the voting rights of a national delegation.
It was this sanction, voted in April 2014 after the annexation of the Crimea, that motivated the shattering departure of the Russians, followed by a heavy empty chair policy and a suspension of Moscow's participation in the Council of Europe budget from 2017 onwards.
At this stage, however, nothing is yet certain. "We opened the door to the Russians, but we didn't roll out the red carpet", Petra De Sutter commented on Tuesday at midday, after a session where the Russian delegation's credentials were fiercely contested by Nino Goguadze, elected Georgian member of the Conservative Group, and Ukrainian Volodymyr Ariev, member of the European People's Party. The first pointed to the annexation of Crimea, the "occupation of Abkhazia and Georgia", "ethnic cleansing", the increasing number of Ukrainian prisoners... The second denounced the composition of the Russian delegation containing four Duma deputies on the European Union's blacklist. In addition, one of them, Leonid Slutzkiy, was proposed for vice-presidency of the meeting.
"This objection is justified", Petra De Sutter reacted. "If the required number of parliamentarians needed to support it [at least 30 from at least 5 national delegations] had not been reached, I would have stood up myself".
For her, this is a "provocation". "We must break the deadlock", she concedes, "and I have worked hard to do so as head of the Committee on Rules of Procedure, but we will not accept everything in this battle of Russian and Ukrainian public opinion. In my opinion, the composition of the Russian delegation will have to be changed in order for the credentials to be validated."
For the time being, the case has been referred to the Monitoring Committee with the opinion of the Committee on Rules of Procedure. It is up to it to submit two reports to be debated on Wednesday afternoon, i.e. the very day of the election of the Secretary General, scheduled for the whole day, with the results announced at around 8 pm.
The suspense will therefore be high. Who, the Belgian Didier Reynders or the Croatian Maria Pejcinovic Buric will take over the Council of Europe for the next 5 years? Will the Russians be allowed to sit again in the Chamber of the Parliamentary Assembly and participate in the vote? And if so, how will the Ukrainian and Georgian delegations react? Will they in turn slam the door for months or even years?
These delegations are on the alert, as we saw during the debates and vote on the De Sutter report. 226 amendments were tabled by the Georgian delegation, joined by its allies from Georgia, the Baltic States and the United Kingdom, in order to slow down a process that we knew was unstoppable. 225 of them were rejected before a final vote was taken by 118 votes to 62 with ten abstentions. Solidly tied up and supported by a hemicycle that wanted to get out of the crisis, the resolution held its ground.
To the great displeasure of the Ukrainians. "I am ashamed of what is happening here, I am ashamed of all of you, I will never come back", said MEP Oleh Liashko before leaving the room. "For us, what is happening here is a tragedy", said Oleksii Goncharenko, spearhead of the Ukrainian resistance to the return of the Russians, which he equates to a pure and simple abdication of the Council of Europe.
A tension that Petra De Sutter regrets. "The sanctions have not worked, as we can see after 5 years", she says. "We must get out of the crisis, renew the dialogue". But not at any price. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)