Russian legislators met with members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Members of the Council of the Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation met with members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe at the 137th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly; European MPs were attending the Assembly with their national delegations, said Vladimir Lukin, Deputy Chairperson of the Council of the Federation Committee on Foreign Affairs .
Petr Tolstoy, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, and State Duma deputies also participated in the talks.
The other party in the conversation was represented by Ian Liddell-Grainger, Chairman of the PACE European Conservatives Group, Nigel Evans, President of the UK delegation to PACE, Filippo Lombardi, Vice-President of the Swiss delegation to PACE, and members of other national delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the СЕ, including German, Turkish, Hungarian, Moldavian and Greek delegations.
“We had a normal, productive dialogue with no tension and no strident statements made„, Vladimir Lukin noted.
He also added that European deputies stated their own take on the PACE situation and spoke about the Assembly’s latest events and decisions. In particular, there was discussion of the report by Italian deputy Michele Nicoletti, who proposed setting up a working group with participation by all the member states of the Council of Europe for preparing the 2019 Summit to confirm European unity, to protect and promote democratic security in Europe.
According to Vladimir Lukin, the meeting also discussed Russia’s proposals for amending the PACE regulations. “Of course, this is not an issue to be resolved at a single meeting; it is a topic for further talks with PACE, which, I think, will not be a long time coming„, said the Deputy Chairman of the specialised committee of the Federal Council.