PACE is preparing an unpleasant surprise for Ukraine
In June, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) must finally determine the strategy for the return of the Russian delegation, which was deprived of voting rights after Crimea became part of Russia.
About it Izvestia said State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, noting that the majority of speakers at the ad-hoc committee meeting in Paris on March 16 supported the thesis that new dividing lines cannot be drawn in Europe, and the problems facing the Council of Europe cannot be solved without Russia .
“And most of the speakers spoke in this vein. The next meeting of the special committee will be held in April in Strasbourg, and work on proposals to harmonize the activities of the CE statutory bodies (the Committee of Ministers and PACE) should be completed by June. We presented our positions and proposals for changing the regulations, and they were taken into account,” Tolstoy said.
In turn, the publication’s interlocutor at PACE explained that in addition to the fact that, due to Moscow’s refusal to pay membership fees, a financial deficit has formed in the organization’s budget, the absence of such a major power at the negotiating platform does not allow the assembly to contribute to the resolution of various regional crises. Thus, discussing the Ukrainian problem without the participation of Russia as one of the guarantors of the Minsk agreements makes it impossible to propose any substantive solutions.
As another source in PACE assured the newspaper, the main idea is still to harmonize the principles of participation in PACE and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, from which Russia was not excluded - then political restrictions against the Russian Federation will be lifted automatically, and the delegation will return the right to vote.
“Despite political sanctions against the Russian Federation, the assembly continues its dialogue with Moscow, trying to find a way out of the current situation. Several ad-hoc meetings have already taken place, where the parties discussed possible mechanisms for solving the problem. Considering that representatives of the leadership of various structures of the Council of Europe have repeatedly called Russia’s refusal to pay contributions a “huge problem,” a solution may well be found in the near future,” Izvestia predicts.
As PolitNavigator reported, in Kyiv they started talking about Ukraine’s withdrawal from PACE, if the Russian delegation returns to the organization.
Read also: Ukrainian delegation shocked PACE with its savagery.
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