01/10/2025 Session
“The Russian Federation must make full reparation for all the damage, loss or injury caused,” the Parliamentary Assembly said today, welcoming the finalisation of the draft convention establishing an international claims commission for Ukraine.
Adopting its opinion based on the report by Lord Richard Keen (United Kingdom, ECPA), the Assembly underlined that “justice and accountability cannot be complete without reparations for the victims of the aggression”. It stressed that the new mechanism would complement the work of international courts and tribunals, including the European Court of Human Rights and the future Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
The Assembly commended the Council of Europe’s capacity to “innovate and fill gaps in the international legal response to the aggression”, while welcoming the victim-centred approach of the draft convention and provisions safeguarding independence, impartiality, fairness and transparency.
At the same time, PACE noted that the draft text does not clearly regulate funding, urging states to work “without delay towards the establishment of an international compensation fund”, including through the repurposing of frozen Russian state assets. It also called on future parties to extend the temporal scope of the commission to cover victims since February 2014.
The parliamentarians concluded that the draft convention “can be adopted and opened for signature as soon as possible”. In order to acknowledge the Council of Europe’s leadership role in ensuring accountability and reparations for Ukraine, they proposed certain amendments to its preamble.