Nino Goguadze spoke about violation of the CoE fundamental principles and occupation by Russia at the PACE Spring Session. 

Russia tries to put CoE to crisis and crisis cannot be addressed by decline of the PACE authority. “We stroll on the vicious circle trying to solve the political issues by means of the procedures. We keep evading from naming everything as they are. The report provides that the CoE is in the deep political and financial crisis and offers crisis solution by means of decline of PACE authority. I believe that we all are the Parliamentary system countries and we, MPs naturally support the strong Parliamentary representation, equipped with effective authority to eliminate the gaps or achieve the progress”, - she noted.

Russia tries to adjust PACE principles and procedures to Russian Federation, which will decline the idea of PACE and entail Russia to remain the country occupying the territories of the neighboring states.

“Today, we discuss the document offering us to reduce our sovereign rights. In fact, the problem we encounter cannot be procedurally solved. Real problem lies in the fact that one CoE member state constantly violates the fundamental principles of the organization and we still fail to achieve consensus on how to bring this state back to the principles of the organization. Instead, we witness the attempt of adjusting the PACE principles and procedures to Russian requirements. If every time when the member state deviates from the principles, we try to adjust our rules to this violation, we will decline the idea of the organization and facilitate Russia to remain the county occupying the territories of the neighboring states, and the country posing threat to European security. Naturally, the attempt of improvement of coordination between CoE bodies will always exist, though the CoE institutions shall exercise their sovereign authorities independently without restrictions”.

The PACE shall be equipped with strong authorities to address the challenges.

“And most importantly, when the member state violates the essential principle of the organization, Coe Constituent institutions shall share the uniform and principal position expressed in free manner without reservations”.