The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Sanctions against the Russian Federation in response to the crisis in Ukraine

The article examines the actions taken by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) against the delegation of the Russian Federation in response to the crisis in Ukraine. In 2014 the Assembly decided to suspend some of the rights of the Russian delegation and menaced to annul the credentials of the delegation if an effective effort was not made on the part of Russia to sort out the situation and to reverse the annexation. The adoption of sanctions against the Russian delegation raised several legal issues related to the very existence of a sanctioning power of the CoE and in particular of the Assembly. The question is whether the powers to “penalize” the parliamentary delegation have been ex- ercised by PACE in conformity with the Statute. The Statute of the CoE does not attribute sanctioning powers to the Assembly in order to target the states which are in breach of Article 3 or international law more generally. This power falls firmly in the hands of the Committee of Ministers as a way to put pressure on, deter, and eventually punish a state which has seriously violated the core of the principles of the CoE system. PACE, in the exercise of its functions, may certainly contribute to activating procedures to monitor the activities of the member states, but the last word is in the hands of the Committee which may suspend the rights of representation of a state and request that the offending state withdraw from the Committee entirely. The Statute plainly does not attribute this power to PACE. In the absence of the jurisdiction of a Court to deal with the problems caused by the lack of harmonisation between the sanctions adopted by the Committee of Ministers and the ones introduced by the Parliamentary Assembly through some modifications of the Rules of Procedure, the recent call for a 4th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the CoE by the Assembly in order to “preserve and further strengthen this unparalleled pan-European project currently threatened by divisions and a weakening of member States’ commitment” by “harmonis- ing[...] the rules governing participation, representation and responsibilities of member States in both statutory organs, while fully respecting the autonomy of these bodies” should be welcomed.