The Council of Europe is “being tested” by Russia’s war in Ukraine, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said, after addressing delegates of the 46-nation body in Dublin.
Mr Coveney told a meeting of the standing committee of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Europe-wide body that defends democracy, human rights and the rule of law, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was challenging the organisation to act.
Addressing the parliamentary representatives, Mr Coveney said he never thought as a politician or as a Minister for Foreign Affairs or Defence that he would “see a war on the scale that we are seeing in Ukraine right now and the human misery that it is causing on our continent”.
“But it is here and this is our time as public representatives to respond to that, as leaders, because if we don’t, the very foundation of the Council of Europe – its raison d’être – should be called into question,” he told the meeting in the Westin Hotel in Dublin.
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Ireland, one of the founding members of the European organisation, has just taken over the six-month presidency of the council for the seventh time in the 73-year history of the organisation.
Speaking after his address in Dublin, Mr Coveney said he intended to be “vocal” during its presidency and that he would work to bring together the heads of government of all 46 member countries together in what would be only the fourth ever summit of the leaders of the council.
There was a possibility the summit could be held in Kyiv and Ireland was “certainly open” to the idea but that this depended on the security situation in the country, he said.
The council, which was set up after the second World War, is being “greatly challenged in terms of how we respond to war again at the heart of Europe”, said the Minister.
Mr Coveney, who has described the council as “the conscience of Europe”, told delegates that he believed it was “the appropriate body” to look at constructing an international tribunal that could hold Russia to account for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
“That is something that I think we need to get legal advice on. Certainly, politically, there is an appetite to explore that proactively during our presidency over the next six months,” he said.
He said the council’s expulsion of Russia in the early stages of the war in Ukraine showed what the organisation could do when it decided to take action.
Ukrainian MP Mariia Mezentseva, chair of Ukraine’s PACE delegation, told The Irish Times she was in the basement of a building in her native Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, during a Russian bombardment when the council’s president called to tell her of Russia’s expulsion.
She called for international lawyers and human rights defenders to help Ukraine’s government establish an international tribunal in order to take a crime of aggression case against Russia.
Ms Mezentseva said she had been advised during her visit to Dublin that Ukraine should sue Russia as a former member of the council through the European Court of Human Rights, a part of the council, before a six-month window closes in September following its expulsion.
“Ireland is taking prominent leadership in defending human rights and dealing with this case at a very effective stage,” she said.
