Good afternoon to you all. Thank you very much for coming.
Mr. Kara-Murza, I want to start with you. Something happened last month in Europe that a lot of people may not know about. If we go back a little bit in history, we know that the Russian Federation applied to join the Council of Europe in 1992. In 1996, that request was granted. As you're also aware, the European Court of Human Rights is the last place of recourse for those citizens in Russia who don't have recourse through their own courts, especially for politically sensitive cases. We know that in 2015, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing the Russian government to ignore rulings from the ECHR. We know that in June 2017, the Russian government stopped paying its contributions to the Council of Europe. That was a sizable amount, as you can appreciate—almost 7% of their budget.
We also know that last month, a meeting was held where 47 nations decided to allow Russia to continue on in the Council of Europe. France and Germany were two countries that were really behind that proposal. Knowing the history of what Russia has done, is this not a further setback of human rights in Russia? Also, 47 European nations have in some ways indirectly supported that.