16 July 2015

Source: HRO.org (info)

• Human rights defenders  Access to justice  European Court of Human Rights

This week the Constitutional Court ruled that ‘decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are subject to implementation only in cases where the supremacy of the Constitution has been recognized.’ Kirill Koroteev, a lawyer from the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Moscow, is of the view that as regards activists who have been suffered from repression and turn to the European Court on Human Rights this makes for little change.

As Kirill Koroteev told OVD-Info, the Constitutional Court’s decision is in no way binding for the European Court of Human Rights, and as for Russian courts, ‘they have not previously been paying too much attention to the European Court.’

Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, as before, remain binding in accordance with international law – Article 46 of the Convention on Human Rights. As long as Russia remains a signatory to the Convention, decisions of the European Court are binding regardless of the opinions of the country’s judges. Otherwise international law cannot work.

‘The Constitutional Court’s decision was taken so as to provide grounds for the non-payment of money in cases similar to the Yukos case,’ Kirill Koroteev says. ‘It is possible that sums of between 5,000 euros and 20,000 euros awarded to demonstrators will still be paid as before. Russian courts have previously ignored decisions of the European Court of Human Rights that required that a case be reviewed. Russian courts are not prepared to take decisions, basing themselves on the Convention on Human Rights, that could create new cases for the European Court. Now the Russian courts will simply be able to cite the decision of the Constitutional Court’.