Lithuania urges PACE not to restore the rights of the Russian delegation
The Seimas of Lithuania adopted a resolution calling on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to avoid restoring the rights of the Russian delegation. As Delfi news agency reported, the document was adopted almost unanimously: 77 deputies voted in favor and one abstained.
As Deputy Egidijus Vareikis presented his resolution, he reminded his colleagues that PACE had restricted the rights of the Russian delegation in 2014 after Russia had annexed the Crimea. The Russians lost the right to nominate a Committee Chairman or Speaker, to vote in plenary sessions, or to elect judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) or any other officials.
“And so now, after four years, an initiative was introduced to return to Russia all the rights it lost in PACE. This will be done in a rather coarse and strange way, changing certain Articles of the Charter of the Parliamentary Assembly,” Vareikis said.
By the resolution, the deputies expressed disappointment with Russia’s failure to fulfill its international obligations and said that it “seeks to change the rules of the Council of Europe, as well as to lift the applied sanctions.” They urged PACE not to accept the rules proposed by the Russians and emphasized that such changes would allow the state to restore its rights without fulfilling the organization's decisions.
It’s stressed in the document that “by making the decision to accept the proposals of the Russian Federation, it will create a negative precedent for other states not to comply with its obligations. Such a decision will undermine the credibility of the Council of Europe as a human rights defender, custodian of democracy and the rule of law, and could create a huge crisis of the authority of this international organization.”