When Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1996, this was a major step and a sign of a fundamentally new time. The successor state to the Soviet Union joined a pan-European human rights regime that provided the citizens of its member states with effective judicial tools to defend their rights. Today, a good two decades later, Russia’s membership is in the balance. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the country saw its voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) suspended. In protest, Russia stopped the payment of part of its contribution to the …read more
Source: Heinrich Boell Foundation