ArmInfo.The face-to-face session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will take place no earlier than January 2021. PACE Vice-Speaker, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Petr Tolstoy told reporters.
"The session scheduled for October was canceled, the next PACE session in the usual, face-to-face format, if it takes place, it will not be earlier than January," Tolstoy told reporters following the meeting of the Assembly Bureau on Monday, RIA Novosti reports.
He recalled that elections for the PACE Secretary General, judges of the ECHR and other officials of the Council of Europe should be held in January. "If not all delegations can come to the upcoming session due to the existing epidemiological restrictions - someone will be in the hall, and someone will take part by video link - this will violate the principle of equal rights in the assembly. I consider it unfair to hold such hybrid meetings in relation to those who cannot attend in person, '' Tolstoy stressed.
In addition, according to Tolstoy, during the meeting of the Bureau, a decision was made on the conduct of an expanded meeting of the PACE Standing Commission on October 12 to Oct. 13 and Oct. 22 to Oct. 23 in the format of a video conference with the participation of not only its members, but also representatives of all national delegations.
"This cannot be called a Solomon decision in the absence of a full-scale session. Doubts are raised by the fact that only members of the commission, and not all parliamentarians, will be able to vote, "the politician summed up.