"European Court

The Russian judicial system is creating a new mechanism for protecting the rights of citizens

The Supreme Court of Russia has begun to create a new mechanism to protect citizens from judicial red tape and combat non-execution of court decisions . Yesterday it became known that the Supreme Court (SC) has already begun developing a corresponding draft federal constitutional law. The need for its adoption, according to the Supreme Court, is related to relieving the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is overwhelmed with complaints from Russians about the insufficiently effective work of the Russian judicial system, in their opinion . Such problems, as stated in the Supreme Court, must be resolved within our country and with the help of our own courts, so as not to lower the country’s prestige in the eyes of Europeans. But at the same time, it is emphasized that no one is in any way and in no way going to limit our citizens in their right to address their complaints to Strasbourg.

As already reported, the authorities, concerned that Russian citizens were literally flooding Strasbourg with their complaints, seriously wondered how to solve this problem within the country. The bulk of these complaints - about 80% - are related to non-execution of court decisions or excessively lengthy litigation. The European Court considers dozens of similar complaints every month, or rather, automatically issues fines to Russia for violations of the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. For the ECHR, the court is considered to have taken place not at the moment when it makes a decision and it enters into legal force (as established by Russian legislation), but when it is executed and everyone receives what is due to them in accordance with this decision.

Various ideas have been expressed about creating a national “filter”, at the level of which it would be possible to monitor “slanders” submitted to Strasbourg and try to deal with them before European judges learned about the mistakes of our judicial system. At the beginning of July, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Valery Zorkin, said that citizens do not sufficiently use the judicial system , and especially its very top - the Supreme Court, the Supreme Arbitration Court and, in fact, the Constitutional Court. Mr. Zorkin emphasized, in addition, that it is necessary to make special amendments to the legislation in order to correct the current situation.

It turned out that his colleague, Chairman of the Supreme Council Vyacheslav Lebedev, had already moved from words to action. Yesterday, the chairman of the judicial panel of rapporteurs of the Presidium of the Supreme Court, Vladimir Davydov, spoke on this matter at a meeting of the Public Chamber. “I met with the chairman of the court, Vyacheslav Lebedev, and he asked me to tell you that the Supreme Court is developing a draft federal constitutional law, similar to those already applied in some countries, for example in Italy. In accordance with it, it is proposed to give the Supreme Court the authority to consider appeals from citizens when they sue the state in a particular case,” said Mr. Davydov. He explained that if this law is adopted, Russian citizens will be able to file complaints about non-compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights not to the Strasbourg Court, as today, but to the Supreme Court. This initiative was also supported by the Russian Commissioner at the ECHR, Veronica Milinchuk. “If a number of powers were transferred to the Supreme Court, the European Court would welcome this decision, as it would reduce the burden on the Strasbourg court and would be much more efficient for citizens, who would not have to wait two to three years for their cases to be heard,” - - she said at a meeting of the Public Chamber.

It remains unclear exactly how the mechanism for filing and considering such complaints will be implemented. Some clarifications on this matter were given to Vremya Novostei yesterday by the press secretary of the Armed Forces, Pavel Odintsov. He noted that the bill being developed by the Supreme Court so far deals only with two categories of citizens' complaints - non-execution of court decisions and too long trials. “The Russian judicial system would like to create a mechanism in which a citizen, in cases where a court decision on some of his issues is not implemented or has taken too long, could go to court, which will pay him compensation for violating Article 6 of the convention, which guarantees the right of everyone to a fair trial within a reasonable time,” Mr. Odintsov said. - Non-execution of court decisions is a particularly striking category of cases with which the European Court is truly overwhelmed. The mechanism we propose will remove the load from it. But this is a purely technical problem, and we must solve it on our own. This is about the image of our country and the prestige of our judicial system.”

Mr. Odintsov emphasized that no one intends to prohibit citizens from turning to the European Court with the adoption of a new law. “The European Court is sacred. No one will abolish it, and no one will be deprived of the right to file a complaint there,” said the press secretary of the Armed Forces. - If a citizen who filed a complaint with our court about the violation of his rights is satisfied with the decision and the compensation awarded to him, then he simply will no longer need to ask for the same thing in Strasbourg. But if he doesn’t like something, he will remain within his right to demand European justice.”

Ekaterina BUTORINA