Russia’s State Duma annulls compliance with ECHR rulings

Moscow: The State Duma this week approved a package of bills on non-compliance with the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the second and third reading during its Tuesday session.

According to the approved amendments, those ECHR decisions made after March 15, 2022 (the date Russia announced it was withdrawing from the Council of Europe) won’t be implemented. Additionally, compensation payments according to the ECHR’s rulings will be made only in rubles and only to accounts in Russian banks. That said, the office of the Russian Prosecutor General will be able to make payments according to the ECHR decisions until January 1, 2023.

The law also establishes that the ECHR’s rulings will no longer serve as grounds to reconsider the decisions made by Russian courts. The initiative also provides for the development of an additional compensating mechanism which will expand the grounds to cancel effective court decisions and make it possible to reopen criminal cases due to new or newly discovered circumstances.

“The European Court of Human Rights in the hands of Western politicians has turned into an instrument of political struggle against our country. Some of its conclusions directly contradicted the Russian Constitution, our values and traditions,” State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin noted.

For example, earlier, the ECHR demanded that Russia recognize same-sex marriages, he reiterated. “And there have been a multitude of such rulings by the European Court. We cannot agree with this,” he stressed. The top lawmaker specified that the decisions by Russia’s courts would have primacy over the ECHR’s conclusions.

The Russian Federation informed the director general of the Council of Europe that it was withdrawing from the organization based on Article 7 of its charter according to which any member of the council may withdraw following an official notification. Russia began the pullout process on March 15.