Strasbourg is looking for workarounds – Newspaper Kommersant No. 15 (7460) of 01/27/2023
[ad_1]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), whose jurisdiction has not extended to Russia since last year, reported on the results of its work for 2022. Despite the withdrawal of our country from the Convention on Human Rights, Russia still retains its place among the leaders in terms of the number of applications to the ECtHR: it accounts for 16,750 cases – 22.4% of all pending cases. But the total number of complaints received from Russia at the ECtHR last year began to decline. And it will continue to decline, experts predict, although Strasbourg will have to deal with Russian affairs for a long time.
The number of complaints received from Russia last year at the ECHR decreased by more than a third compared to the previous year, follows from the final report of the court: if in 2021 there were 9432, then in the past – only 6077. This was to be expected, because in 2022 Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe and ceased participation in the European Convention on Human Rights. Nevertheless, it still retains one of the leading positions in terms of the number of applications pending before the ECtHR: only Turkey has more, against which a total of 20,100 complaints (26.9%) have been filed. Ukraine is in third place with 10,400 hits (13.9%).
Strasbourg insists that the court retains jurisdiction over cases against the Russian Federation in connection with the facts that took place before September 16, 2022. This was recalled by the President of the ECtHR, Shiofra O’Leary, when presenting the report. “The Court testifies that a state cannot use its exclusion from an international organization to evade its obligations in the event of a violation of the convention,” she pointed out. “This is all the more important, given that many of the cases under consideration are of great responsibility of Russia under international law. Ms O’Leary added that in the coming months, the court intends to determine the most appropriate course of action for handling the approximately 17,000 cases against Russia that remain before it, as well as possibly many other cases brought as a result of events in Ukraine.
The Russian authorities, however, set themselves another cut-off date for the end of the powers of the ECtHR. Moscow has ceased interaction with the ECtHR since March 15, 2022, and, according to the law subsequently adopted, judgments of the European Court issued after this date are not enforced in Russia.
As calculated in Strasbourg, in total, in 2022, the Secretariat of the ECtHR submitted 45,500 applications to judges for consideration – 3% more than in 2021. Decisions were made on 4168 applications (33% more than in 2021), another 35,402 were declared inadmissible or excluded from the list of cases (+7% by 2021). But the number of decisions on interim measures grew the most: there were 3106, an increase of 61% compared to 2021 (1925), and almost one in three were granted by the court. At the same time, it is noted in the final report, the court continued to implement the strategy of the so-called priority cases – that is, it tried to consider cases recognized as the most important in the first place. A total of 2,643 decisions were made on such complaints, a 45% increase from a year earlier.
In relation to Russia, 384 resolutions were issued, which is a third more than in 2021, 374 of them recorded at least one violation. The most frequent violation (198 decisions) is inhuman or degrading treatment, in 195 cases the court found a violation of the right to freedom and security, in third place (119 violations) – the right to effective legal protection.
The number of cases pending before the court has decreased by only 250 over the year, notes Yury Berestnev, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the ECtHR. According to him, there was no collapse, and this is understandable: the array of complaints from Russia is large, and it will take a long time to deal with them. In addition, new applications from Russia still continue to arrive, although they are less and less: potential applicants understand that in any case, one cannot count on payments from the Russian state. According to the expert, the new methods of the court in dealing with appeals from Russia will most likely come down to the fact that similar complaints will begin to be grouped and make one decision at once on a large number of appeals. In any case, no one will implement the decisions, and they will fall on the shelf of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, and one cannot count on a diplomatic dialogue between the Russian authorities and Council of Europe officials, Mr. Berestnev adds.
[ad_2]
Source link