Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Condemns Transnational Repression and INTERPOL Abuse
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has passed a resolution condemning transnational repression and urging new laws to combat it.
The Council of Europe is not part of the European Union. Founded in 1949, it contains 46 European states – Russia was expelled after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Parliamentary Assembly is made up of 306 members drawn from the national parliaments of the Council of Europe’s member states. It is, in other words, a parliament of parliamentarians.
The Assembly’s resolution was based on a report by Constantinos Efstathiou (Cyprus). Drawing on data from the U.S.-based Freedom House, it offered a definition of transnational repression as occurring when a “state acts to “intimidate, silence, harass, coerce, abduct, harm or kill individuals” beyond its borders.
The resolution passed by a vote of 52 in favor, 5 opposed, and 7 abstaining. All votes against the resolution came from members of the governing AK Party of Turkey. Turkey has been repeatedly condemned, including by Freedom House, for practicing widespread transnational repression, so the AK Party’s opposition is no surprise. A particularly notable voice in support of the resolution was Estonian politician Eerik-Niiles Kross, a lifelong opponent of the Kremlin who was himself the target of Russian INTERPOL abuse in 2013.
Mr. Efstathiou’s report is worth reading in full – and the author of this blog is obliged to Mr. Efstathiou for recommending his own “excellent” report for New Lines Institute. Particularly interesting is the report’s condemnation of the “misuse of legitimate international legal co-operation mechanisms, such as the INTERPOL notice system, extradition requests, mutual legal assistance frameworks and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures.” This wider framing of INTERPOL abuse, placing it in context with the abuse of other broadly similar mechanisms, is important.
The Assembly’s resolution is unlikely to lead to immediate change. In the U.S., Congressional concern about INTERPOL abuse has run headlong into the Executive Branch’s lack of enthusiasm for changing arrangements that work well for it, and similar dynamics are at work in other countries. But the resolution shows that pressure on INTERPOL is growing – which is particularly important given that many Council of Europe members are now considering whether or not to sign a new agreement that would substantially enhance INTERPOL’s legal immunity.
GYH authors Sandra Grossman, Charlie Magri, and Dr. Bromund recently published an extensive analysis of this agreement, calling on INTERPOL’s member nations to reject it. If the Assembly’s resolution encourages those member nations in Europe to oppose the agreement, and to examine the broader abuse of legitimate international legal co-operation mechanisms to which Mr. Efstathiou rightly calls attention, it will have done a valuable service.
