Duma speaker says time for Council of Europe to stop monitoring Russia

(Interfax – May 21, 2013) State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin has said that at a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in the next autumn he is intending to raise an issue of abandoning the monitoring of Russia by the Council of Europe. Naryshkin said this at a meeting with Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjoern Jagland in Moscow on 21 May, as reported by Russian news agency Interfax on the same day.

“As regards the monitoring of Russia by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I believe that Russia has fulfilled its key obligations it undertook when joined the organization in 1996. Thus, all necessary conditions have been created to stop monitoring in existing manner and continue cooperation in the form of normal post-monitoring dialogue,” Naryshkin was quoted as saying. He also said that he is going to raise this issue at a PACE session in Strasbourg next autumn.

At the meeting, Naryshkin also talked about the reform of the Council of Europe and proposals formulated by Jagland in this regard. “We know that certain aspects of a reform proposed by you are being discussed. In particular, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe is regarding proposals related to various monitoring procedures differently. We also think that there is a certain risk here as well as tendency of some participants towards politicizing monitoring-related issues,” Naryshkin said.

The Russian side believes that the Council of Europe should improve the efficiency of its work and play a central role in the activities of the whole system of European institutions, Naryshkin added.