Petr Tolstoy: double standards undermine the PACE credibility

Members of the Russian delegation to PACE, headed by Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Petr Tolstoy, held a meeting with the President of the Assembly Rik Daems. Russian parliamentarians drew attention to the inadmissibility of the use of double standards
Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Petr Tolstoy
Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Petr Tolstoy

“Double standards can be seen in any issue of the agenda, whether it is related to the protests in Belarus or the general debate on human rights and freedom of expression. It should not be like this, because such approaches undermine the credibility of the largest platform for the European inter-parliamentary dialogue and devalue the adopted decisions and resolutions,” Petr Tolstoy Tolstoy Petr Olegovich Tolstoy
Petr Olegovich
told journalists following the meeting.

“We conveyed the position of the State Duma, which was reflected in the statement adopted last week. We are convinced that the debate on certain issues at the Assembly should be thematic, not country-specific: I mean that not only those problems that exist in the areas located to the east of Vienna should be considered, but also those that can be found to the west of it. We see how the authorities act during the protests in the Netherlands, riots in Germany and France, and we believe that this issue should be considered in a comprehensive manner, and not selectively,” he added.

As for the problem of the detention of the blogger Alexei Navalny, the Russian parliamentarians also expressed their position and agreed to discuss this issue again during the visit of Rik Daems to Moscow in the coming months.

The parliamentarians also discussed the relevant issues of the upcoming session, as well as issues of inter-parliamentary cooperation between Russia and the Council of Europe.