The legitimacy of a number of the Council of Europe structures formed on the basis of elections at PACE will look questionable for Russia if the Russian parliamentary delegation is not fully reinstated within PACE, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.
By now, “more than a half of judges of the European Court of Human Rights, who are elected by PACE, have been elected without Russia’s delegation,” he noted. “Then, PACE held voting on the Commissioner for Human Rights, and Mrs Dunja Mijatovic was elected, again without the Russian delegation. Next year will see the election of the Council of Europe’s Secretary General. If by that time, this problem is not resolved, the legitimacy of these structures of the Council of Europe will be highly questionable for us.”
“What is going on in PACE only adds to the problem of the shortage of [European] forums, because the aggressive Russophobic minority in PACE is sparing no effort so that this forum cease to be a common European one,” Lavrov stressed.
According to the Russian top diplomat, Moscow responded to the criticism for non-payment of its contribution and a threat of being expelled from the Council of Europe back in the summer. “We said that as soon as the Council of Europe’s Statute and Charter are observed, as soon as our parliamentary delegation is reinstated in its rights without any reservations, we will pay everything due to the Council of Europe immediately,” he said.