International

Tiny Kox, a member of the Dutch Senate and chair of the United Left Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), was present in Paris on 10th December for a meeting of the Assembly's Committee on Rules of Procedure. The meeting took the decision to end the suspension of Russia's voting rights in the Council of Europe, a suspension instituted in response to the country's illegal annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Beyond that, the Committee ruled that in future no country's members of the Parliamentary Assembly may be deprived of their right to vote. In response to the suspension, Russia's parliamentarians decided to terminate their participation in PACE until their full rights were restored. They will now be entitled to return to play a full role in the body's deliberations and decision-making.

Welcoming the decision, Senator Kox said: “Now that this sanction has been ended, the ball is once again in our Russian colleagues' court. In January they retake their seats in the Assembly, a body in which all of Europe's parliaments are represented. Whether that will indeed happen remains to be seen. Let's hope so. It's absolutely necessary now for Europe to have a forum in which politicians from across the continent can meet with each other and discuss how to reduce tensions in the midst of all of the menacing language currently being employed by so many governments. We simply cannot allow ourselves to enter another Cold War. The dangers are much too great.”