VIENNA, June 26. /TASS/. The problem of Russia’s debts to the Council of Europe can be settled only when its delegation is reinstituted in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told TASS on Tuesday, ahead of June 30, the deadline for payment of Russia’s contribution to the Council of Europe’s budget.

"It will be possible to speak about complete settlement of this matter only after our delegation is granted all the rights back," he said. "First and foremost, I would like to remind you that the problem originates from the irresponsible behavior of a number of delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and, as a matter of fact, has been in place since 2014. Waiting for a positive solution, we kept on paying our contribution to the Council of Europe but in 2017 we decided to freeze these payments to create extra impetuses to the resolution of this matter. But no solution to this problem has been found so far."

The current problem, according to Grushko, is not linked with the Russian delegation only. "The matter is that using procedural rules, PACE has changed the fundamental principle of the equality of states that is committed to paper in the Council of Europe’s Charter," he explained. "So, the crisis in the Council of Europe has much deeper roots than the matter of expulsion or non-expulsion of a delegation. It is necessary to restore the organization’s unity and ensure the principle of equality."

"We know that work on this matter is underway within various structures and hope that sooner or later strategic considerations stemming from the necessity to keep in place this unique European instrument of forming and maintaining a common legal framework in a space from Lisbon to Vladivostok will get the upper hand and an appropriate solution will be found," the Russian senior diplomat stressed.

Russia and PACE

Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland said on Tuesday that Russia is supposed to pay its contribution to the Council of Europe by June 30.

In April 2014, the Russian delegation to PACE was stripped of key rights, including the right to vote and take part in the assembly’s governing bodies, following the developments in Ukraine and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. The issue of restoring the rights of the Russian delegation was raised at PACE twice throughout 2015 but the sanctions are still in place: Russia is deprived of the right to vote and cannot take part in the Assembly’s governing bodies and elections monitoring missions. In response, Russia suspended its participation in the PACE activities till the end of 2015. In 2016-2017, Russia skipped PACE meetings due to the ongoing sanctions.

In late June 2017, Russia said it was suspending payment of its contribution to the Council of Europe over its non-participation in PACE. Concurrently, it suggested PACE’s regulations be amended to ensure that no one could deprive the lawmakers of their rights but for their voters.

On January 11, 2018, chairman of the State Duma international committee, Leonid Slutsky, confirmed that Russia would not apply for confirmation of its rights for 2018.