Russia in the Council of Europe

• 1. The Gamble at the Door

  ›

  Russia joined the Council of Europe on the 28th of February 1996. Scholars Irina Busygina and Jeffrey Kahn later wrote that "no serious observer believed that Russia met the criteria for membership." That admission would spend 26 years proving them right.

  In 1994, a commission appointed by the Parliamentary Assembly had found Russia unfit. It cited deficits in constitutional rights, freedom of movement, political and religious freedoms, the death penalty, and conditions in detention. The Parliamentary Assembly then suspended Russia's application over the First Chechen War. The assembly cited what it called "the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the Russian military."

  British delegate David Atkinson argued at the time that Russia could always be suspended if it failed its commitments. The Committee of Ministers had set the bar for membership in 1992: pluralist parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, and human rights protection. Russia, at the moment it joined, was not meeting any of those convincingly.

  Russia signed the European Convention on Human Rights in 1996 and ratified it on the 5th of May 1998. What does it mean to admit a state you know is not ready, hoping membership alone will do the reforming? That commitment, made in writing, would prove far easier to make than to keep.

• 2. The Reformer's Wager

  ›

  In 1989, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe granted the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union a special guest status. Soviet parliamentarians could attend sessions but could not cast a ballot. That foothold in the chamber made full membership feel like a natural next step.

  President Boris Yeltsin worked to bring the Russian Federation into full membership after the Soviet Union dissolved. The argument for admission rested on a specific bet: membership would change Russian behavior in line with the Council of Europe's fundamental values.

  The Civil Code of Russia and the Criminal Code of Russia entered into force around the time of accession, developments officials noted favorably. Russia did change several laws after joining, bringing them into at least nominal compliance with Council of Europe requirements.

  Ukraine, Romania, and Croatia also entered the Council of Europe with membership standards relaxed, around the same period. The concessions made to admit Russia were not unique to Russia. The difference lay in Russia's scale and the weight any systematic failure would carry for the institution.

  A formal report on Russia's obligations, dated the 2nd of June 1998, was being prepared within two years of accession. The Council's readiness to scrutinize compliance so early suggested that faith in the reformer's wager was not unconditional.

• 3. Last Hope of Justice

  ›

  "Last hope of justice" was how supporters described the European Court of Human Rights when making the case for Russia's membership. Whatever the flaws in Russia's national justice system, the argument ran, Strasbourg offered an external check that domestic courts could not.

  Strasbourg did achieve results in individual cases that were low-profile and not politically sensitive. Judgements found violations, awards were paid, and specific wrongs were acknowledged. The effect of membership was judged successful in at least some of those smaller cases.

  By 2008, however, more than 25 percent of all European Court of Human Rights cases concerned Russia. That volume exposed systematic failures in how Russia protected human rights at home. The backlog created by the flood of cases clogged the court's docket for years.

  Russia's most common response to adverse judgements was to pay the complainant and leave the underlying problem in place. Reforms did happen in some cases, but they were the exception. More often the state settled and moved on.

  Scholars Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou and Donal K Coffey published a paper in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly in 2019. They concluded that court judgements cannot drive structural change without political will behind them. Russia's conduct across thousands of cases had demonstrated that finding. The scholars described Russia as showing "persistent and clear disregard of the values and aims of the CoE."

  Russia's continued full membership, despite ignoring court judgements, had the potential to erode the institution's credibility, the scholars warned. The Second Chechen War would give the Council its first formal opportunity to test whether it was willing to punish that disregard.

• 4. Wars and Withdrawals

  ›

  Russia was suspended from voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly from 2000 to 2001. The Council of Europe had invoked that sanction in direct response to the Second Chechen War.

  Since 2000, Russia had been on a path of autocratization and a steady decline in freedoms. That trajectory ran directly counter to the Council of Europe's founding purpose. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, another member state. In 2014, it launched conflicts in parts of Ukraine and annexed Crimea, also the territory of a fellow member.

  After the Crimea annexation, the Parliamentary Assembly condemned Russia's war of aggression and demanded its withdrawal in a nonbinding resolution. The assembly suspended some of Russia's voting privileges. Russia's response was not to comply but to disengage. Its delegation did not attend assembly sessions in 2016, 2017, or 2018. Russia also withheld its membership dues during that period.

  In 2019, the suspension was dropped and Russia returned. Many human rights activists in Russia had argued against any expulsion. Their reasoning was concrete. As long as Russia held membership, Russian citizens could petition the European Court of Human Rights against government abuses. Losing that access was not a small thing.

  Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland told the Financial Times that a Russian expulsion would be "a negative development for Europe, because we will have a Europe without Russia." He called it "a big step back for Europe." Whether that assessment would hold under more extreme circumstances remained to be tested.

• 5. A Dispute Over History

  ›

  René van der Linden of the Netherlands put the idea to the Parliamentary Assembly in 2003. He wanted the Council of Europe to formally condemn the crimes of totalitarian regimes, just as the Nuremberg judgements had condemned fascism.

  In September 2005, the Swedish parliamentarian Göran Lindblad presented a revised report to the assembly's political commission. Lindblad argued the resolution should restore historical justice by condemning communist crimes as Nuremberg had condemned fascism.

  Göran Lindblad's proposal targeted not just the crimes committed under communist governments, but communist ideology itself. Foreign communists and socialists expressed strong objections on those grounds. Russian politicians reacted sharply as well. They perceived the resolution as an insult to Russia and as an attempt to revise history. After difficult debates, the title of the proposed resolution was modified. Instead of "crimes of communism," the final wording read "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes."

  On the 25th of January 2006, the Parliamentary Assembly adopted resolution 1481. Ninety-nine parliamentarians voted in favor and 42 voted against. The Russian delegation united in opposition despite its deep ideological differences. Its members included representatives from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, United Russia, and Rodina. The sole exception was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, who voted for the resolution.

  The assembly's Standing Committee adopted the resolution on the Franco regime on the 17th of March 2006. The resolution on preventing a revival of Nazism followed on the 12th of April 2006. Russian deputies took some satisfaction from the sequence: communist crimes, fascism, and the Franco dictatorship had each been condemned in turn. René van der Linden, who had first proposed the resolutions in 2003, later became the Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly. The institution he helped lead would face a far more direct challenge to its values in 2022.

• 6. Expelled

  ›

  On the 25th of February 2022, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine, 42 of 47 member states voted to suspend Russia's voting privileges immediately. The only country besides Russia to vote against was Armenia. Serbia and Azerbaijan did not attend the session, and Turkey abstained.

  Human rights scholar Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou described the large-scale invasion of one Council of Europe member state by another as unprecedented in the institution's history. His reading of the vote was clear: almost all member states no longer wanted Russia in the Council of Europe.

  Greece had been the only other member to leave the institution, in 1969, in what became known as the Greek case. Greece later rejoined following a democratic transition. Russia's situation offered no similar path.

  On the 15th of March 2022, hours before a scheduled vote on its expulsion, Russia filed a notice of voluntary withdrawal. Under the rules, that would have delayed termination of its membership until the 31st of December 2022. Because the expulsion procedure was already under way, the notice had no legal effect. On the 16th of March 2022, the Committee of Ministers voted to expel Russia with immediate effect.

  Former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev publicly endorsed restoring the death penalty in Russia within days of the expulsion.

  In 2026, the Parliamentary Assembly created a Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces. Its stated aim was to "promote collaboration and address issues related to Russia's aggression against Ukraine." The platform's name made a distinction the expulsion had not erased: between Russia the state and the Russians it governed.