Estonia will object to reinstating Russia’s full membership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said.
Estonia voted against Russia’s return to PACE at the Council of Europe’s recent ministerial session, Reinsalu told journalists on May 23.
“We will continue to look for various solution options with like-minded states. Tomorrow, I am visiting Warsaw, Poland, where my counterpart and I will certainly bring up the package of these problems,” he said.
“This decision is about values for us. This is important to us from the viewpoint of security. An aggressor should not receive an approving signal when it has, in fact, escalated the situation,” Reinsalu said.
Russia’s conduct, “regardless of its motives, should not be rewarded by certain states,” Reinsalu said.
The Russian delegation has not taken part in PACE sessions for several years after it was deprived of voting rights in April 2014 over the situation in Ukraine and Crimea’s unification with Russia. In addition, Russia has stopped paying membership contributions to the Council of Europe, which might lead to its expulsion from the organization. Russia has conditioned its return to PACE and the resumption of its payments to the Council of Europe budget on the full restoration of its powers and adjustments to the PACE rules to prevent infringements of the rights of national delegations in the future.
