Undying Love for Problems
Everything seemed more or less to have been settled — on the eve of celebrating the New Year and immediately after Ukraine began a determined attempt to normalize its relations with the Council of Europe, that is, with one of the few European organizations it has been admitted to. The Constitutional Court hastily found that the death penalty is unconstitutional, and Parliament adopted a law on political parties. In other words, within a few weeks Kyiv did everything for which the Council of Europe had allocated years. “We’re riding high now,” a Verkhovna Rada Deputy told me before the meeting of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Committee for Legislation and Human Rights. However, the meeting ended with a decision not to consider the Ukrainian issue, that is suspension of the powers of the Ukrainian delegation. On the other hand, they decided to welcome Ukraine in every way possible. Also, a hope was expressed that quite soon Ukraine will present the Council of Europe with European Human Rights Convention Protocol No. 6, ratified by its Parliament, and by doing so will once and for all dismiss such issues, while the endless Ukraine- Council of Europe will eventually develop into the normal work of delegations.
However, the trouble is that the week before the last the Ukrainian Parliament suddenly ceased to exist. And even if there still has been no clearly expressed official reaction to this news, it does not mean that everyone — especially the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe — likes it. Obviously, at the meeting that opened on January 24, the Ukrainian issue can hardly be avoided. And we can only guess what will be said there, given the extreme sensitivity of the northern countries to cases of violation of human rights and parliamentary democracy. But surely, the statements and assumptions about a possible dissolution of Parliament will not add points to Ukraine’s score in international games.
One might recall, of course, that so far the Council of Europe has not been visible in serious international developments. It might be remembered that neither the Council of Europe nor other entities were able to do anything about the Balkans, or the Caucasus, or that Russia has easily brushed aside the Council’s of Europe, concerns and warnings with regard to Chechnya. This list can go on.
But the indisputable fact is that Ukraine counted on the Council of Europe as a kind of trampoline on which it could spring, perhaps clumsily, but gradually toward Europe. The fact remains that Ukraine has no other such trampoline or any other possibility to make its voice heard. And the fact remains that Ukraine is not Russia. Endless attempts by the Ukrainian leadership to use Russia’s political secondhand, do not inter alia, increase its prestige with Western Europe as a normal independent nation. The more so as Russia does not declare on every occasion its wish to integrate into the European Union.
Still, I would not want the world to consider Ukraine as something between Russia and Belarus. Similarly, I would not want the Council of Europe as a result to make signals later to be used for drawing certain conclusions by other players, with whom Ukrainian diplomats will then have to struggle mightily.
