EPTA terminated membership of Russia

The Analytical Department of the Russian Council of the Federation has been an associate member of the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) network since 2015. In its session on 18 October 2022, members of the EPTA Council acknowledged the recent exclusion of the Russian Federation from the Council of Europe. In its Opinion, adopted on 15 March 2022, the Council of Europe noted, among others, that the recent actions of the Russian Federation were a "serious breach" of Article 3 of the Statute of the Council of Europe and condemned "in the strongest terms, the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine ". The EPTA Council agreed that principles of the rule of law, human rights, fundamental freedoms and genuine democracy form the basis for prosperous cooperation among EPTA members. The EPTA Council also observed that the Analytical Department of the Russian Council of the Federation had not participated in EPTA meetings since 2017. It had also failed to respond to communications from the EPTA secretariat. Under Article 1.10.3 of the EPTA Rules and Conventions, Council membership status can be "terminated, suspended or downgraded" upon request of any Council member, where the "respective member is not responding to any attempt to communicate and does not participate in any of the meetings for more than two years." Therefore, the EPTA Council in its session on 18 October 2022, unanimously (with two abstentions) decided to terminate the associate membership of the Analytical Department of the Russian Council of Federation with immediate effect.