If you do not respond, we will write to the NPO – Newspaper Kommersant No. 231 (7432) dated 12/13/2022

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CMCE) has developed a new strategy for interaction with Russia regarding the execution of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: now they will remind our authorities about pending cases through the Foreign Ministry, and receive information about the progress of their execution from Russian NGOs and even through the UN. In Strasbourg, they chose this path, since they did not have any official direct channels for communication with Moscow on court cases, and, according to the CMCE, Russia still owes the applicants about €2.02 billion in fair compensation. However, the expert doubts that the new strategy will work and lead to some new steps on the part of the Russian authorities.

On December 12, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Maria Pejcinovic-Buric, wrote to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in which she called on the Russian Federation to comply with the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued before September 16 this year. In addition, she recalled that the European Court will continue to make decisions regarding Russia, and the Committee of Ministers continues to monitor their implementation. This was reported by the press service of the Council of Europe. Apparently, such an appeal is an element of a new strategy for overseeing ECtHR decisions concerning Russia, which was approved by the CMCE at its last quarterly meeting.

Recall, On March 15, 2022, Moscow notified the Council of Europe about the start of the procedure for the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from this organization. The next day, the Council of Europe decided to immediately exclude Russia, after which the Russian authorities stopped communication with the ECtHR and the CMCE, including on issues of execution of decisions taken by the European Court. Last summer, Russia adopted a law according to which decisions of the ECtHR that came into force after March 15, 2022, are not enforceable, and all payments in earlier cases must be made only in rubles and to accounts in Russian banks. In Strasbourg, referring to the provisions of its charter, they argue that Russia is obliged to comply with the decisions of the ECtHR regarding its actions and inaction, adopted before September 16, 2022.

At the same time, Strasbourg has virtually no official channels of communication with the Russian authorities on court cases.

Before the break with the Council of Europe, this was done by the Prosecutor General’s Office, but on July 18, President Vladimir Putin freed Head of the Main Directorate for International Legal Cooperation of the Prosecutor General’s Office from the duties of the Commissioner of Russia at the ECHR.

However, the CMCE decided that supervision over the implementation of decisions taken against Russia should continue, and approved a new strategy for interaction with the Russian authorities. Without receiving feedback from them, Strasbourg intends to expand the exchange of information with Russian non-governmental organizations. It was also decided to intensify interaction with the relevant UN human rights instruments, of which Russia is still a party. “Improved synergy with such bodies could provide the Committee with more up-to-date information, as well as, possibly, alternative channels for the implementation of measures necessary for the execution of ECtHR cases,” the proposals prepared for the CMCE meeting say. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe was asked to notify the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about pending Russian cases after each meeting on the execution of ECHR decisions with a call to execute them.

It is also planned to create a separate updated register of outstanding decisions on fair compensation – it will show, among other things, the amount of interest accrued for late payments. In particular, this week the CMCE for the first time clarified the amount of interest due on the claim of Georgia against Russia: if the main amount of compensation is €10 million, then the interest for delay reaches about €1.2 million.

Now, according to the Committee of Ministers, there are 2,227 cases under the control of the Committee of Ministers, which are awaiting full execution by the Russian authorities, including no information on the payment of compensation in 1,874 cases. At the same time, after March 16, 242 cases were received for control by the CMCE, and only three were closed (based on information about payments received earlier).

The total amount of Russia’s debt under the decisions of the ECHR as of November 8, 2022 is € 2.02 billion.

However, the lion’s share of this amount falls on compensation under the complaint of Yukos: it is about €1.87 billion, and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has already allowed the Russian authorities not to pay this money. If we do not take into account the debt in the YUKOS case and the first lawsuit of Georgia, then the amount of unpaid compensation, according to the CMCE, is € 135.7 million, Yury Berestnev, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the ECHR, calculated. However, he urges to treat these figures with caution: according to some reports, payments continued to be made in Russia after March 16, but this information is not sent to Strasbourg. The letters of Secretary General Buric are an on-duty imitation of the vigorous activity of the apparatus and the CMCE itself, since the game, obviously, goes “one way”, the expert states. It is clear that appeals to the Foreign Ministry do not oblige anyone to anything and there will be no reaction to them, he is sure.

Anastasia Kornya