In calling for “the immediate expulsion of the Russian Federation from a Council of Europe where it has no place”, Denys Chmyhal, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, got straight to the point in front of the organisation’s Parliamentary Assembly, meeting in an extraordinary plenary session on Monday and Tuesday.
“Ukraine is on fire” and “the international community must react”, he hammered home, before calling, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has done repeatedly, for securing the Ukrainian sky, “also to preserve European security”.
The Assembly rose as one to applaud the speaker by video conference, which, as its chairman, Tiny Kox, pointed out, “is not usual”.
This rare unanimity bodes well for what will prevail tomorrow evening during the vote in the Assembly.
At stake will be the proposal to exclude Russia from the Council of Europe.
The Assembly will discuss the issue for 2 days; the opinion it adopts will be consultative and non-binding, as the final decision rests solely with the Council of Europe’s Committee of 46 Foreign Ministers, which will meet on 17 March.
On 25 February, the day after Vladimir Putin launched the war, it decided to suspend Russia’s representation rights effective immediately. In other words, it banned Russia from all its statutory bodies, but without going so far as to ask it to leave, pure and simple.
It is this final step that is in question this week, and it is important that all Council of Europe bodies are unanimous on a decision to exclude, which would be a first in the history of the oldest and largest pan-European organisation, created in Strasbourg in 1949.
Speaking after the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Italian Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Benedetto Della Vedova stressed, on behalf of the Committee of Ministers, how essential this close coordination was. “The Council of Europe must speak with one voice in the face of the abomination of this war”, bearing in mind that “the ultimate goal must be to safeguard the ideals of peace and justice, which are the foundations of our organisation”.
“If we come out united, it will be strengthened”, said Marija Pejčinović Burić, Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
“A clear message will be a strong message for multilateralism and for a better Europe”, she added.
As for Tiny Kox, he declared this Monday morning, at the opening of this extraordinary session, that by “illegally crossing the border with Ukraine, the Russian Federation had also crossed the red line of the Council of Europe. The report and recommendations to be debated and voted on tomorrow are being prepared in the Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee and the list of speakers has never been longer”. It will be a day of “crucial importance” dedicated to “a decision never asked of the assembly”.
Russia’s hours within the “common European home” advocated for by Mikhail Gorbachev in July 1989 before the hemicycle of the Council of Europe seem definitively numbered. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)