The State Duma again refused to send a delegation in PACA and pay an annual contribution • Mediazona • RIMA

The State Duma again refused to send a delegation in PACA and pay an annual contribution

The State Duma decided not to send her delegation to the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in January 2019 and not to pay the annual fee to the Council budget, the parliament said . On January 16, the Federation Council made a similar statement.

Deputies believe that PACE “grossly violated” Russia's rights as a member of the Council of Europe, when they deprived the Russian delegation of the right to vote at meetings and participate in the work of governing bodies of PACE.

“As a result of a protracted anti -Russian campaign, the activities of Russia in the Council of Europe on the parliamentary line were actually suspended, and the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, violating the basics of parliamentarism, ended up in a deep systemic crisis,” the State Duma believes.

Because of this, deputies note, more than half of the judges of the European Court of Human Rights were elected without the participation of representatives of Russia. This, the deputies believe, "poses into question the legitimacy of the decision of the ECHR in relation to Russia."

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The Russian delegation was deprived of the main powers in PACE in 2014 after the events in Ukraine and the accession of Crimea. Because of this, Russia decided to withdraw its delegation, and in 2017 stopped paying contributions.

In the fall of 2018, the Secretary General of the Council of Turbjorn Jagund said that if Russia does not begin to pay contributions until the summer of 2019, the Committee of Ministers will be obliged to exclude the country from the Council of Europe.

The State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin did not exclude that Russia itself could leave the council. The speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko also said that Russia "matures an internal decision to leave the Council of Europe." After these statements, the head of the Agora international human rights group Pavel Chikov told Mediazone how the ECHR works with complaints from Russia.