Basic Rights Of PACE Delegations' Members Not Subject To Sanctions - Resolution

STRASBOURG (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th June, 2019) The basic rights of members of delegations to PACE are not subject to any sanctions, a PACE's resolution adopted on Tuesday night said.

PACE has decided that its members' "rights to vote, to speak and to be represented in the Assembly and its bodies shall not be suspended or withdrawn in the context of a challenge to or reconsideration of credentials," the document said.

The resolution on credentials and voting at PACE was passed by the PACE, by 118 votes to 62, with 10 abstentions.

From the very beginning of the conflict with PACE, the Russian delegation spoke of the need to document this provision.

In April 2014, Russia was stripped of its voting rights in PACE in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis and aftermath of the Crimea referendum. Since 2016, the Russian delegation has not been renewing its credentials ahead of the assembly's sessions in protest of the discrimination it faces within the organization.

The country has also frozen its contributions to the Council of Europe, pledging to withhold future payments until such time as the Russian delegation's rights are restored.

Last week, speaker of Russian parliament's lower house Vyacheslav Volodin said that his country insisted its powers in PACE must be fully reinstated by June 26, which is when the new secretary general of the Council of Europe will be elected.

According to Volodin, if the report by Belgium's Petra de Sutter with recommendations of the Rules Committee on delegations' powers in PACE is adopted on June 24 without exemptions, exactly the way it has been prepared, Russia will be able to apply for participation by the end of the day.