Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland has arrived in Moscow to discuss ratification of Protocol 14 to the European Convention with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. You may remember that this Protocol reforms the Strasbourg Court and will increase the Court’s case-processing capacity.

   Russia is the first Council of Europe member-state which Mr. Jagland is going to visit as Secretary General. The day before Dmitry Medvedev instructed the State Duma to consider the issue of Protocol 14 ratification. According to Kommersant, yesterday Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the Duma Committee for Civil, Criminal, Procedural Law and Arbitration,  mentioned that the Duma was going to discuss the issue of Protocol 14 ratification during one of the first January sessions.

In 2006 the State Duma refused to ratify the Protocol on the plea of its inadmissibility for Russia. However, recently the parties have moved forward to a consensus, mostly because the Council of Europe has taken into account Russia’s requests.

Meanwhile, today the ECtHR will deliver first judgments on the merits under the new Protocol – when three actors instead of seven are involved in decision-making under the case.  These judgments will be delivered under cases against Germany dealing with delays in case-processing on the domestic level.  

Besides, the official web-page of the Starsbourg Court has been significantly upgraded. Now guests have a chance to read some ECtHR judgments translated into inofficial languages of the Council of Europe, including Russian.  We are glad that one of the first uploaded translations is the ECtHR judgment under the case “Mikheyev vs. Russia”. Besides, another case-law judgment under the case “Maslova vs. Russia” has been translated into French. You may remember, on 25 November 2009 the Interregional Committee against Torture filed another application under this case since the Russian authorities had failed to prosecute those responsible for Olga Maslova’s rape.