Council of Federation ratifies 14th Protocol to the ECHR

Today, the members of the Council of Federation have actually started the reform of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR), having ratified the 14th Protocol to the European Convention on Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which deals with the Strasbourg Court.

The ratified Protocol transfers the ECtHR into the domain of the case law and assumes a lot of procedural changes. Thus, according to this document, the term in service of ECtHR judges is increased from six to nine years. The judges are authorized to reject obviously non-eligible claims and exclude complaints from the pending list: this can be done by a sole judge. Decisions on the merits are made by a panel of three judges.

Besides, the CE Commissioner on Human Rights can issue written remarks and take part in hearings as the third party, while the Court is vested with the right of holding inquiries in the responding country.

To have the reform launched, the Protocol was to be ratified by all the 47 countries of the Council of Europe, and Russia was the last to do it. Thus, as the ITAR-TASS reports, Russia's ratification of the 14th Protocol to the ECHR gives an actual start to reforming the Strasbourg Court.

Besides, the Russian party has managed to secure that the judge representing the Russian Federation, may be present at any stage of consideration of a Russian case in any format.

Alexander Konovalov, Minister of Justice, also recognizes that ratification of the 14th Protocol was Russia's need; he told about on air of the "Echo Moskvy" Radio.

Nevertheless, earlier certain Russian officials opposed the ratifications of the Protocol, being afraid that the flow of complaints filed by Russians against actions of the state will sharply go up.

On the contrary, Sergey Mironov, Chairman of Council of Federation, expects that now the number of appeals lodged by Russians to the ECtHR will decrease. According to his version, "requirements to our judges will toughen, and they will behave such, when considering cases, as not to give grounds to our citizens to apply to Strasbourg."

Let us remind you that on January 15 the 14th Protocol to the ECHR was ratified by the State Duma with 392 votes for and 56 against.