The Committee for Political Affairs and Democracy of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe gave a positive opinion today regarding Kosovo's request to become a member of this organization.
Portal Kosovo-online reports that at the session 31 deputies voted "for", four were against, and one abstained.
Two votes against were from representatives of Serbia, and one vote against each from BiH and Montenegro, while Greek representative Alexis Tsipras abstained.
Montenegro is represented in the Committee by MP Maja Vukićević of the Democratic People's Party (DNP). She told Vijesti yesterday that she will not vote for the admission of Kosovo into the SE. She said that she sees Kosovo's application for membership in the CE as problematic for several reasons, the first of which is "that it is a territory that is still disputed", because it is not recognized by more than half of the member states of the United Nations, and also by several EU countries. such as Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia.
At the Committee meeting in Paris, a vote was taken in favor of the report of Greek MP Dora Bakoyanis, which recommended that Kosovo be accepted into the CE.
The next step is for Kosovo's request to become a member of the Council of Europe to be considered in the PSSE plenum and for a vote to be held there as well, and the PSSE meeting is expected on April 18. The final word on whether Kosovo will become a member of the Council of Europe will be given by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
"After the discussion in which we participated and expressed our views, which is that Kosovo is not a state, it will never be, and that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, that human rights are being violated in Kosovo, that international law has been violated and that all three conditions that Bakojanis stated two weeks ago, it was ended by the report being adopted with 31 votes in favor," Biljana Pantić Pilja, the head of the Serbian delegation in PSSE, told Kosovo-online.
Vukićević is the head of the Montenegrin delegation in the SE Parliamentary Assembly (PSSE), which consists of three members, two from the government and one from the opposition, and three deputies. In addition to Vukićević, the members are Vasilije Čarapić (PES) and Boris Mugoša (SD), while the deputies are Nikola Camaj, Nađa Laković (PES) and Miloš Konatar. Representatives take part in the voting, and in case of their inability, deputies vote.
The main board of the DNP, Milan Knežević's party, on Sunday supported Vukićević to vote against the admission of Pristina to the SE.
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