After holding a special session in March on the war in Ukraine and Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe, the organisation’s Parliamentary Assembly devoted two reports to the conflict and its consequences during this week’s plenary session in Strasbourg.
The first, debated on Wednesday 27 April, led to the unanimous adoption of a resolution and a recommendation calling for “maximum pressure on the Russian Federation to immediately and unconditionally cease its aggression”.
The second, drafted under the urgency procedure, examined on Thursday 28 April, and also welcomed by a unanimous vote, calls on member States that can do so to activate their “universal jurisdiction” to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes in Ukraine in close cooperation with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The text also calls for the creation of an ad hoc tribunal on the crime of aggression based on a multilateral treaty between friendly countries, supported by a UN Resolution. “The European Union and the Council of Europe could provide political and technical assistance to this tribunal”, said rapporteur Aleksander Pociej (EPP, Poland) at the opening of the debate, before mentioning Strasbourg as the seat of the court. “This would allow synergies with the European Court of Human Rights”, he said.
For the Council of Europe, the war against Russia in Ukraine is a terrible and unprecedented challenge.
It is a question of “rebuilding our organisation”, said German Socialist Frank Schwabe, rapporteur of the first text, on Wednesday. Like many other members of the assembly, he called for an urgent fourth summit of the heads of State and government of the 46 member States of a Council of Europe that must now redefine itself.
“The European Union has revisited its mandate” - stressed Frenchman Jacques Maire (ALDE), who has been very involved in the issue of political prisoners in Russia - but the Council of Europe, after having been the first international organisation to exclude Russia, has reverted to “overly bureaucratic responses”. “It is not up to the task”, he deplores, pointing to the fact that the mandate of the Commissioner for Human Rights does not allow her to visit Ukraine on her own initiative and the announcement that the Council of Europe office would only reopen after the publication of the adjustments to the “Ukraine Action Plan”, announced this week by the Secretary General without any date being specified.
The Parliamentary Assembly is determined to “push the barriers of the Council of Europe”, in the words of Jacques Maire, who calls for a reflection on how the Assembly, the Secretary General and the Committee of Ministers could work “harder and together” to respond convincingly to the war in Ukraine and its consequences.
The resolution adopted yesterday calls on member States to take “decisive action” by the international community to defend the “democratic world order” and calls, among many other points, for the facilitation of contacts with rights defenders, independent journalists, universities and democratic forces in Russia and Belarus.
It also asks member States to consider “increasing their assistance to Ukraine in its efforts to strengthen the protection of its territory, including its airspace”, which is a military dimension outside the Council of Europe’s remit, but which the parliamentary assembly has decided to commit to.
Link to the Resolution calling for the establishment of a tribunal on crimes of aggression: https://aeur.eu/f/1ei
Link to the Resolution on Council of Europe response to the war in Ukraine: https://aeur.eu/f/1ek (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)