We'll cope, we'll fix it

Russian judges will try not to overload their colleagues in Strasbourg

Non-execution of court decisions, conditions of detention in pre-trial detention centers and the slowness of justice are the main complaints of Russian citizens against their country. Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Valery Zorkin and rapporteur of the Commission on Legal Issues and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Eric Yurgens, agreed at yesterday's meeting that these problems are the main flaws of the Russian Themis.

“The European Court receives a lot of complaints from Russia in connection with non-execution of court decisions and delays in consideration of cases,” Mr. Zorkin told reporters after a meeting with the PACE emissary. “Both are protected by Article 6 of the European Convention on human rights, and violation of reasonable time limits for consideration of cases, and non-execution of decisions indicates a violation of the right to fair justice.”

These two problems have already made Russia one of the leaders in the flow of complaints to Strasbourg. At the same time, the main non-executor of court decisions is the Russian state itself. In particular, in Strasbourg, the recognition of a violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of non-execution of decisions on the payment of compensation to the liquidators of the Chernobyl accident is literally on stream. The adopted amendments to the current legislation, including the Budget Code, which established a mechanism for executing decisions to collect compensation from the state, have so far only partially solved the problem.

Mr. Zorkin clearly does not like the fact that Strasbourg is taking on part of the functions of the Russian Themis. In his opinion, it is Russian courts that should be the main defenders of citizens, and Strasbourg should be the court of last resort. “We must remember that the European Court is a subsidiary court, it is an optional instance,” said Valery Zorkin. “When an avalanche of such complaints comes to it, the European Court itself can “choke.” Therefore, we talked about how activate and reform the national judicial system so that the citizen receives protection there.”

However, this approach also coincides with the opinion of Strasbourg itself, whose role is not only to protect human rights, but also to develop the national systems themselves. “I came to Russia primarily to urge my Russian colleagues to send as few cases as possible for consideration to Strasbourg, that is, to effectively resolve them at the national level,” said Eric Jurgens at a meeting with the Chairman of the Supreme Court, Vyacheslav Lebedev. At the same time, the PACE emissary delicately said that the Supreme Court “today is working very well and very hard to ensure that the lower courts of the Russian Federation deal more effectively with such cases and, accordingly, relieve the burden on the court in Strasbourg.”

Yuri KOLESOV