EŽTK metines, ar grėsta Europos Taryba? #COE

rugsėjo 3^rd marked the 65^th jubiliejus of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)’s official entry into force. When it was first applied in 1953, the ECHR was one of the first treaties of the newly formed Council of Europe, ratified by just eight northern European countries. Today, it has been ratified by 47 states throughout Europe and the post-Soviet space, with each new member of the Council signing on to the ECHR and agreeing to uphold its protocols for the defence of human rights and the rule of law. The ECHR underpins the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which offers vital recourse to advocates and activists in countries whose leaders are less than inclined to abide by the terms of the bedrock treaty.

Even as the Council of Europe commemorates this anniversary, it finds itself at a potentially catastrophic impasse with one of its most powerful members: Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation. It has been 22 years since post-Soviet Russia joined the Council, and exactly two decades since it ratified the ECHR. In that time, Moscow’s membership has gone from a sign of radical democratic change to a bitter point of contention.

After Russia invaded and annexed the sovereign territory of another Council of Europe member state –neighbouring Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula – Russia lost its voting rights in the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE). In response, the entire delegation of Russian parliamentarians marched out of the assembly chambers in indignation.

During the follow-up press conference, emotions flared as Russian delegation head Alexey Pushkov spoke venomously of terminating Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe. He then proceeded to conjure up images of American interventionism in Serbia and Iraq, casting Russia’s extraterritorial interference in a shade of moral ambiguity by alluding to American double standards. His invective glossed over the fact that the United States is not, in fact, a member of the Council.

Four years on, Putin’s government has upped the ante by withholding its budgetary allocation to the Council. The institution now faces a €42.65 million budgetary shortfall that represents 10% of its yearly budget as a result.

While it is shocking enough that Europe’s foremost human rights body is financially beholden to one of its worst human rights violators, more shocking still is that Russia may have the Council on its knees in its bid to have its voting rights restored. Secretary-General Thorbjörn Jagland responded to the loss of Russia’s budgetary contribution with a madcap tour of European capitals, ominously warning of the repercussions Moscow’s withdrawal might cause. Jagland insists that the Council’s Įgaliojimas “is to protect human rights in Russia and Crimea, or wherever people live on the continent.” In short: accept Russian demands to prevent Russia from leaving the institution entirely.

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That position has the support of pro-Russian parliamentarians within the PACE, who seem to be pushing for a return to “verslo, kaip įprasta“ instead of addressing Crimea and Russia’s ongoing aggression in eastern Ukraine. These include Swiss delegate Filippo Lombardi, who has insisted on his country’s “neutral role” in his position as head the Switzerland-Russia interparliamentary group – and has previously solicited Russian financing in his position as president of the Ambrì-Piotta ice hockey club.

Will a unilateral climb down by the Council of Europe truly help defend human rights in Russia? While Secretary-General Jagland has pointed to the ECtHR as integral for human rights governance in Russia, the Kremlin has already made quite clear it is willing to disregard the Court’s decisions. In 2014, the ECtHR ruled Moscow must pay Yukos shareholders $2.5 billion in compensation for illegally dispersing and selling off what was formerly the country’s largest oil company. Russia responded with a law declaring the supremacy of its Constitutional Court over the ECtHR 2015.

The Russian court put that power to use last year, rejecting the ECtHR ruling and declaring Moscow had be įsipareigojimų to compensate the defunct company’s shareholders.

With Jagland and forces within the PACE effectively lobbying on Russia’s behalf despite the Putin government’s antidemocratic behaviour and flagrant disregard for the ECtHR, could the sway of the ECHR itself soon be in doubt? The Council of Europe, after all, has traditionally relied on 6 grands payeurs to contribute in disproportionately high levels to its budget: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey. Turkey has already followed Russia’s lead by cutting €20 million from the Council’s budget. Ankara’s ire came after the Council decided to award the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize to Murat Arslan, a constitutional judge jailed by the government and accused of supporting exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen.

It now increasingly seems that the Council – and, by extension, the ECHR – are reaching a crisis point. Other Council members are freely engaging in human rights violations with little fear of repercussions from the body. Earlier this year, an explosive report revealed Azerbaijan was able to head off criticism from the Council through a “cash for votes” scheme that implicated a number of former PACE members. Hungary and another grand payeur - Italija – stand accused of violating the ECHR in their treatment of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

If authoritarian rulers like Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can freely ignore the decisions of the ECtHR and financially hobble the Council at will, what legitimacy can either institution continue to claim?

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