In April 2014, the Russian delegation to PACE was stripped of key rights, including the right to vote and take part in the assembly’s governing bodies, following the developments in Ukraine and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. The restrictions were prolonged and are still in place.

In September, Secretary General Thorbjørn warned that Russia may be “forced to leave” the Council of Europe. According to him, a new law in Russia that would allow the Constitutional Court to overrule the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is part of a “worrying trend.” For instance, the judgment of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of January 19, 2017, stipulates that Russia is not obliged to (and may not) implement the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) of July 31, 2014 on the Yukos case. The European Court of Human Rights has recently ruled that Russia’s so-called gay propaganda law reinforces “stigma and prejudice” and violates the right to freedom of expression. The ruling deprives Russia of its legitimate right to protect traditional family values.

In June, the Russian Federation decided to suspend payment of its contribution to the budget of the Council of Europe for 2017 (one-third of Russia’s 2017 fee) until full and unconditional restoration of the credentials of the delegation. Russia is currently one of the largest donors to the Council of Europe’s budget along with France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and more recently, Turkey. Its annual membership fee amounts to €33 million ($37.5 million), or about 7 percent of the organization’s overall budget. Two-thirds of this sum had already been transferred to the CE’s accounts, meaning suspended sum totals €11 million ($13 million). No future payments will be made until the rights of the Russian delegation to the PACE are fully restored. The Council of Europe loses "very large amount" because of Russia's decision to suspend the payment of part of the contribution to the budget of the organization for 2017, said the PACE Rapporteur on the activities of the Bureau of Ian Liddell Grainger. Acting President of the PACE Roger Gale called Moscow's decision an "unprecedented problem.

In 2016, Russia did not invite PACE monitors to its parliamentary elections as a sign of aggravating relationship.

It should be noted that the suspension of Russian parliamentarians from participation in the approval of the Council of Europe senior officials in PACE, including Secretary General, Deputy Secretary General, Commissioner for Human Rights and Judges of European Court of Human Rights makes one question their legitimacy.

The organization runs a campaign to persecute those who wish to normalize interaction with Russia. This month, Pedro Agramunt, the leader of the parliamentary assembly, had to resign after being stripped of his powers. One of the reasons was his visit to Syria with Russian MPs in March, when he met President Bashar al-Assad. Assembly members will elect the next president to hold office until the term ends in January. The two proposed candidates are Stella Kyriakides of Cyprus and Emanuelis Zingeris of Lithuania. If Russia does not take part in the election, the legitimacy of the vote will be questioned.

In late September, the Council of Europe's decision-making body, the Committee of Ministers, called on Russian authorities to let opposition leader Aleksei Navalny "stand for election" for the Russian presidency. It was widely perceived as an act of interference into internal affairs. The Russian Justice Ministry responded to the committee's statement by accusing the Council of Europe of "stepping beyond" its authority and trying to "exert political pressure" on Russian authorities.

If Moscow leaves the Council of Europe, the organization would no longer be able to present itself as a pan-European institution. Russia is too big and important to be excluded from European discourse. Without the membership, it will still remain in Europe. Moscow does not need the PACE as a podium to make its views known; it has the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for that purpose.

No Russian official has made a statement that Moscow is going to leave the organization but the idea is in the air. The disappointment with the efficiency of the Council of Europe, the PACE and the ECHR is evident.

It’s time for the Council and its structures to be reformed. It would be right to change the PACE procedures. No delegation should be deprived of credentials or restricted in its rights. No resolutions should be approved by minority of votes. Today, it’s normal to adopt a resolution in the name of PACE when only 50-60 deputies take part in the voting. But the main thing is to change the approaches. There should be no scapegoats, no smear campaigns. The PACE should become what it once was – a platform for exchanging ideas and assessments, taking positions and initiatives, not propaganda efforts.

Soon after Poland’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in October 2015, the Polish parliament passed a law allowing the government to appoint the judges of its choosing to the highest court and not recognize those chosen by its predecessor, the liberal Civic Platform party.

The crisis began in 2015 when Civic Platform, the party then in power, improperly nominated two judges to the constitutional court. When the PiS won October’s elections, it refused to recognize them and also blocked three other judges who had been properly selected by parliament. PiS also wants the court to hear cases in chronological order, rather than setting its own priorities for tackling its caseload. The Polish government believes it is unfair that a constitutional court with a majority of judges appointed under the previous parliament should be able to scupper flagship policies for which PiS secured a mandate in democratic elections in 2015.

Legal experts advising the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog, have concluded that the changes breach the rule of law, democracy and human rights. The Council and the European Parliament have expressed their concerns and urged the government to backtrack on its reform.The constitutional crisis has already given rise to a string of large demonstrations by a new Polish popular movement, the Committee for the Defence of Democracy.

Last December, President Andrzej Duda appointed a candidate backed by PiS as the new head of the constitutional court, which had been locked in a struggle with the government. In response, the European Commission said it considered the procedure which led to the appointment of Judge Julia Przyłębska to the post as “fundamentally flawed as regards the rule of law.” The Commission has set the Polish government a late February deadline to implement measures to protect the powers of the constitutional court.

On February 20, Poland dismissed demands that it implement judiciary reforms deemed essential by the European Commission to uphold the rule of law. Warsaw risks being stripped of its voting rights in the 28-member bloc, but such a move requires unanimity, while Hungary said it would not support sanctions. Hungary has also been harshly criticized by European structures for alleged violations of EU rules and standards.

In 2015, Poland and Hungary joined together to stop an EU ministerial agreement that would have forced all EU countries to honor same-sex “marriages” wherever they were contracted in the European Union. The botched agreement proposed by Luxemburg to the EU justice ministers addressed property rights, pensions and insurance. Poland and Hungary opposedit on the grounds that this would violate their sovereign prerogative to legislate on marriage and family matters.

The fact that two countries in the heart of Europe would oppose even an indirect recognition of same-sex “marriage,” and undoubtedly in the face of strong pressures from other EU states, speaks volumes about the direction Poland and Hungary have chosen. It is not the trajectory in which EU diplomacy, reliant on EU consensus, has taken so far.

The Hungary’s stance on Poland makes EU divisions come in the open to put an end to all the talkingabout the much-praised European unity. And it’s not Brexit only.

Actually, the EI is already divided. The «Alliance of Europe’s South» is being formed to include Greece, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta. Several EU members mull the possibility of a mini- Schengen bloc to comprise the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria – the nations sharing deep cultural and historic links and opposing the idea of wealthy countries in the north subsidizing poorer EU members in the south.

The Visegrad group (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) openly opposes the EU migration policy and offers its own vision of what the EU should become in the future. An extraordinary conference of the groups prime ministers in February, 2016, led to a statement reasserting the members’ insistence on “more effective protection” of the EU’s external borders to “stem the migratory flow.” It also repeated the countries’ opposition to a quota system for resettling refugees through the EU.

The group possesses enough significant growth and influence to move beyond the Continent. In particular, the combined GDP of the group makes it the world’s 15th largest economy, and the number of its representatives in the European Parliament is twice as large as the number of representatives of France, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Europe is facing a prolonged period of political upheaval, with elections also slated for 2017 in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy – all countries where economic anxiety, opposition to the EU and a surge in migration have fed growing support for populist parties.

The EU is also deeply divided over the sanctions imposed against Russia. Many countries oppose the «trade war» and the discontent is growing. Imposed three years ago, the restrictive measures have failed to achieve any results. The policy has little impact on Moscow. President Vladimir Putin has said manty times that Russia’s economy can rebound stronger from Western sanctions. It has been estimated that the cost to European farmers of the sanctions against Moscow is equal to 5.5 billion euros a year.

According to the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), the macroeconomic effects of the trade loss, amounting to €34 billion in value added in the short run and €92 billion in the longer. Keeping farmers in business, on a drip of multi-million euro rescue packages is not a sustainable solution.

Poland and Hungary are getting closer as their criticism of European institutions grows stronger. Both nations defend measures to freeze the process of European integration and take back national prerogatives transferred to Brussels. They will work together to resist the EU’s attempts to enforce a scheme to relocate refugees across the bloc.

One thing leads to another. Poland is working to extend its influence beyond the Visegrad Group by giving a boost to the relations with Romania and Slovakia – EU member states also opposing the bloc’s asylum seekers’ relocation plans imposed by Germany.

The disenchantment with European integration is already pervasive in the region. Eurosceptics not only challenge Brussels, they demonstrate their willingness to unite. A new alliance appears to be emerging inside the EU to undermine it, or even destroy it, from within. Other nations inspired by this example are likely to join, spurring the process that can hardly be stopped.

The organization’s first moves appeared to be of reconciliatory nature. The founding document was signed on May 5, 1949 in London by 10 states: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Great Britain, France and Sweden. No Germany, though the reconciliation with the former enemy was a goal. It’s not an occasion that Strasburg was chosen to host the organization. This city is situated at the German border; it has seen many wars as a target to be captured by troops.

Article 1(a) of the Statute states that «The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realizing the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress». Therefore, membership is open to all European states which seek European integration, accept the principle of the rule of law and are able and willing to guarantee democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms».

Formally the stated aim is always in focus, but with a reservation. The countries of socialist block were excluded from membership and thus destitute of the right to take part in the discussions devoted to the issues of importance for the whole continent. Besides, those were the days of stand-off between the two systems with all the leverage concentrated in the hands of NATO, an alliance created almost at the same time as the Council of Europe. It made the Council an organization of secondary importance turning it into an instrument of anti-Soviet policy implemented by the United States and its Western allies.

As Russia, along with some states of Central and Eastern Europe, joined the Council in the 1990s, the situation appeared to be changing for the better but not for a long time. The return to global stand-off at the beginning of the 2000s made the Council of Europe get back to where it was. There are forces in the West that make the organization meet their own interests. There is an internal conflict between the bodies making part of the Council and it gets exacerbated. Many European leaders are inclined to boost all-European cooperation and get Russia involved in the process while the members of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) hone their skills to launch attacks against the Russian Federation. The crisis in Ukraine has made it all come to surface and take definite shape. The leaders of the Council appear to take an impartial stance. They criticize the regime in Kiev among other things. For instance, Anne Brasseur, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, called on all sides to de-escalate situation and return to what was agreed in Geneva. «I am extremely concerned by the information coming from Ukraine about the resumption of violence, including in the city of Slavyansk», she said, adding, «I call on all sides to urgently de-escalate the situation and end all violent or provocative actions and return to what was agreed in Geneva, particularly as regards the disarmament of illegal armed groups currently active in Ukraine».

At the very same time the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopts resolutions that put all the blame on Russia for anarchy and nationalism going on a rampage in Ukraine today. It looks like kind of epilepsy with different command centers giving mutually exclusive orders to further discredit the Council of Europe.

It should be noted that the organization has actually stopped to tackle acute social, economic and human rights issues – the problems that plague European states.

Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland had to admit in his recent report that Europe faced a human rights crisis which was a real burning problem. According to him, «Human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe now face a crisis unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. Serious violations – including corruption, immunity from prosecution, impunity, human trafficking, racism, hate speech and discrimination – are on the rise throughout the continent. People’s rights are also threatened by the impact of the economic crisis and growing inequalities. The Council of Europe and its member States must act urgently to stop this erosion of fundamental rights».

[1] International Human Rights Acts. Collection of documents. Moscow, 1998, p. 537.