OREANDA-NEWS. May 12, 2010. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe met for its 120th session in Strasbourg on May 11, in which Alexander Grushko, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, took part.

One of the priorities on the agenda of the session was to provide follow-up to the Declaration and Action Plan adopted at the High-Level Conference on the Reform of the European Court of Human Rights (February 18-19, 2010, Interlaken, Switzerland). The Russian representative in his statement particularly emphasized that the Interlaken Process was only the beginning of a big and serious effort to get the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) out of its present crisis state. Obvious was the need to take joint measures to fix its subsidiary character and to exclude the possibility of any politicization of Court activities. If that failed to be achieved, the ECHR would risk becoming a serious problem for the Strasbourg Organization.

The participants in the session discussed the reform of the Strasbourg Organization. Russia expressed support for the ideas of Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland to give a “new breath” to the reformation of the Council of Europe to carry out its main statutory objective – to build a Europe without dividing lines. The reform must result in a substantially greater role for the Council of Europe as a generator of the formation of a common European legal and humanitarian space. However, the Russian delegation’s statement particularly emphasizes that the reform will succeed only if the priorities of the Council of Europe remain such important areas for all 800 million Europeans as social issues, including the protection of persons with disabilities and children; the struggle against new challenges and threats, including terrorism and money laundering; protection of individuals in cyberspace and the development of information technology; culture and heritage; education, youth and sports.

In the context of the celebration in all European countries of the 65th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism, we underlined the need for the Strasbourg Organization to continue to be engaged in the work of preserving and transmitting the historical truth about the war to the younger generation of Europeans on the basis of the inviolability of the postwar acts of international law, including the judgments of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

In the framework of a political debate, the role and responsibility of the Council of Europe towards Bosnia and Herzegovina were discussed. Alexander Grushko noted significant progress in the process of the development of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a modern European democracy that has become apparent in recent years. The internal problems of BiH should be resolved strictly on the basis of Dayton, with full respect for its fundamental principles; that is, based on the consensus of both the entities and all three constituent peoples.

The Russian side welcomes the session’s decision to open a Council of Europe Convention on the Counterfeiting of Medical Products and similar law violations endangering the health of the population for signature before the end of 2010.

The session participants assessed positively the results of Switzerland’s chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers and endorsed the priorities of the Macedonian chairmanship in May-November 2010.

The next meeting of the Committee of Ministers will be held in Strasbourg in November 2010, at which the chairmanship will pass to Turkey.