MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th May, 2019) Russia's Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe (CoE) Ivan Soltanovsky expressed the belief, in his interview with Sputnik, that the council, which celebrates its 70th anniversary on May 5, was currently going through a deep financial and institutional crisis.
Soltanovsky stressed that, over the years of its existence, the CoE had laid the basis of a "pan-European legislative space." The representative also praised the CoE for establishing a "pan-European mechanism of human rights protection." However, he stated that it was not a secret that the organization was currently facing a "not so good" situation.
"It is going through a deep financial and institutional crisis. This results from erosion of the principle of sovereign equality of states, which we can see in modern international relations, from leveling of the value of international cooperation and also from the fact that certain countries use its institutions for achieving their mercenary opportunistic goals," Soltanovsky said.
Soltanovsky added that the CoE had reached a turning point, which would define its future.
"It can overcome the crisis and maintain its current format or it can lose its status of a pan-European organization and become some kind of an appendage to the European Union ... I am sure that all the member states of the European Union have to regard the current situation in the CoE in the context of long-term interests and to manifest their political will in order to overcome the crisis," Russia's permanent representative noted.
Relations between Russia and the CoE are on downward spiral. Moscow was barred from voting within CoE's parliamentary arm, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), after Crimea rejoined Russia in 2014 � a step that faced strong criticism in the West. The Russian delegation to PACE has not been renewing its credentials since 2016, and Moscow suspended its annual contributions to the council in 2017. This move cost PACE 1.5 million Euros ($1.68 million). CoE chief Thorbjorn Jagland has warned Russia that it could be expelled in summer 2019 for repeatedly defaulting on payments.
In April, PACE adopted a resolution urging Russia to form a delegation and pay a contribution to the CoE. Back then, the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko welcomed the resolution but stressed that Russia would return to the assembly only if the organization introduced equal conditions for all delegations.
In late April, Matviyenko said, after her meeting with PACE President Liliane Maury Pasquier, that Moscow saw positive developments in the PACE regarding the crisis with the Russian delegation.
