“We are trying a new mechanism to build a Resolution from the Parliamentary Assembly to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe”, summed up the Belgian Liberal, Rik Daems, in an exchange with EUROPE on Monday 26 June, at the end of a week’s plenary session in Strasbourg.
“Until now”, continues this former President of the Assembly (2020-2022), “our Resolutions have been forwarded to the Committee of Ministers in the hope that our members will reinforce them from the questioning in their national parliaments”.
Rik Daems sees the process as random, and wants to “try the opposite”: the Belgian Senate’s unanimous adoption on 24 May of a “Resolution on the worrying situation of the detained Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza”, its presentation to the ALDE Group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe at the last plenary session, and the commitment of its members to bring it to their respective national parliaments for adoption before the text is returned to Strasbourg, ideally at the October plenary session.
“Once the text has been adopted by the Assembly, it will then go to the Committee of Ministers with the support of the parliaments of several Member States”, stresses Rik Daems.
“If we had adopted this new approach to the environment and human rights, the Council of Europe would have gone further on the issue at the Reykjavik Summit”, he adds.
Turning to the Kara-Murza affair, Mr Daems stressed the “importance of the subject”.
“The Resolution was drawn up in collaboration with the Russian dissident’s team after an ALDE dinner with his wife, Evguenia, who asked us why European sanctions did not affect the executors of the Russian government’s orders who turned her husband’s trial into a parody”.
On this basis, the Resolution calls for inspiration to be drawn from the US Magnitsky Act, which enables individuals who violate fundamental rights to be targeted in a precise manner, in particular by using the “EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime “ adopted in 2020.
“The role of the Council of Europe is to see what instruments are available to defend human rights, both in its own Conventions and at national and Community level”, he summed up, “it’s in its role”.
For Rik Daems, the resolution could also be taken to the level of the European Political Community (EPC), which covers a geographical area very close to that of the Council of Europe.
The Strasbourg-based organisation would thus play its role as a “centre of expertise in human rights “.
“It's an architecture that can work”, he said. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)