EU Partners and their Responses to Russia

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THE EUTHE EUTHE EUTHE EU----RUSSIA CENTRE REVIEWRUSSIA CENTRE REVIEWRUSSIA CENTRE REVIEWRUSSIA CENTRE REVIEW

EU Human Rights Policy

towards Russia

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EU Partners and their Responses to RussiaEU Partners and their Responses to RussiaEU Partners and their Responses to RussiaEU Partners and their Responses to Russia

bybybyby

Dr.Dr.Dr.Dr. Bill BowringBill BowringBill BowringBill Bowring

Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London

INTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTION

In this contribution to the EU-Russia Centre Review the author analyses the responses to Russias

human rights policies and practices by the EUs key partners, the Organisation for Security and

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe (CoE). Russia is not and will not in the

foreseeable future be a member of the EU, but it was a founder member of the OSCE in its previousmanifestation as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975; and has been a

member of the Council of Europe since 1996. Firstly, the author looks briefly at the history of the

Russian empire and the USSR towards the rule of law and human rights. Secondly, he turns to the

CSCE/OSCE. Thirdly, he considers Russias turbulent relationship with the Council of Europe.

RUSSIAS HISTORYRUSSIAS HISTORYRUSSIAS HISTORYRUSSIAS HISTORY

The author has recently written on this topic at greater length1. In brief, it should be borne in mind

that Russia enjoyed significant legal reform prior to its accession to the Council of Europe.

Law as an academic discipline was born in Russia in the 18th century, the century of

Enlightenment. It is well known that Voltaire corresponded with the Empress Catherine II (the

Great), and that Denis Diderot travelled to St Petersburg and held intensive discussions with her.

But it is less well known that the systematic teaching of law was decisively influenced by the

Scottish Enlightenment. The first Russian professor of law, S. E. Desnitsky (1740-1789) studied in

Scotland, under Adam Smith and others, from 1761 to 1767. He was awarded a Doctorate of Civil

and Church Law from the University of Glasgow. He became the mechanism for transmission of the

ideas of Smith and of David Hume, and as well as the Scottish emphasis on Roman law traditions

and principles. This was an important part of Scotlands defence of its distinctive legal traditions as

against the English common law2.

In 1768, on the basis of his studies, Desnitsky presented Catherine with his "Remarks on the

institutions of legislative, judicial and penitentiary powers in the Russian Empire", proposing radical

reforms, including the abolition of serfdom. These were not acted upon for a further hundred years.

Nevertheless, Desnitsky survived Catherine's rejection of his proposals, and he became a full

professor of law in 1777, shortly after the Pugachev uprising. He published books introducing

Russians to the ideas of Adam Smith and John Millar. At Catherine's own instruction, he translated

1Russia and Human Rights: Incompatible Opposites? Vol 1, No 2 (2009) Gttingen Journal of International Law

pp. 257-278 at http://gojil.uni-goettingen.de/ojs/index.php/gojil/article/view/37/bowring.pdf2

lan Watson Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law (1993)


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into Russian volume 1 of Blackstone's Commentaries, and this was published in Moscow in 1780-

3. His courses included the history of Russian law, Justinian's Pandects, and comparisons ofRoman and Russian law3. He died in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, and the Declaration

of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

To this day, Russia has an impressive legal academy and significant research publication. This is

not known in the West simply because of the general absence of translation. It is a great mistake

to regard Russias legal history as an intellectual wasteland.

The reforms proposed by Desnitsky were finally implemented following Russias traumatic defeat

by England and France in the Crimean War (1853-1856). Russia had regarded itself as invincible

following the defeat of Napoleon and the arrival of the Russian army in Paris in 1814. Tsar

Alexander (Aleksandr) II (1855-1881) came to the throne determined to force through radicalreforms4. Starting with the revolutionary Law on Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, Alexanders

reforms culminated in the Laws on Judicial Reform of 20 November 18645. The new laws

introduced a truly adversarial criminal justice procedure, and made trial by jury obligatory in

criminal proceedings. Judges were given the opportunity to establish real independence, in part by

freeing them of the duty of gathering evidence, and enabling them to act as a free umpire between

the parties. The Procuracy lost its powers of "general review of legality", and became a state

prosecutor on the Western model. Justices of the Peace were instituted.

As Samuel Kucherov wrote in 1953, "Between 1864 and 1906, Russia offered the example of a

state unique in political history, where the judicial power was based on democratic principles,

whereas the legislature and executive powers remained completely autocratic."6

Despite thereactionary policies pursued by Alexander III and Nikolai II, the essence of these reforms continued

until the Bolshevik Revolution.

While most of Alexanders reforms were reversed during the Soviet period; in the 1920s the USSR

adopted a European, continental civil law Napoleonic codified legal system, with civil and criminal

codes drawing from German models. Moreover, it would be inaccurate to say that the USSR had no

place for human rights7. Stalins Constitution, approved on 5 December 1936, shortly after the

USSR joined the League of Nations in September 1934, contained paper guarantees of a number

of fundamental rights. Nikolai Bukharin, the best known member of the drafting Commission, who

later boasted that he had written the text from the first word to the last, believed that the

Constitution would be implemented. But he was himself a victim of the Great Purge, and was

3William Butler Russian Law, (1999), pp.24-25, and 52-53. See also A. Brown, The Father of Russian Jurisprudence:

The Legal Thought of S. E. Desnitskii, in William Butler (ed) Russian Law: Historical and Political Perspectives

(1977) pp. 117-42.4

Bill Bowring Rejected organs? The efficacy of legal transplantation, and the ends of human rights in the Russian

Federation, in Esin Orucu (ed), Judicial Comparativism in Human Rights Cases (2003) 159-1825

O. I Chistyakov , T. E Novitskaya (eds) Reformi Aleksandr II (Reforms of Aleksandr II) (1998)6

S. Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers and Trials under the Last Three Tsars (1953), p.2157

Bill Bowring Human Rights in Russia: Discourse of Emancipation or only a Mirage? In Istvan Pogany (ed) Human

Rights in Eastern Europe (1995) 87-109, at 96-97


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executed in 1938 after a show trial. The first generation civil and political rights, including rights

to personal security and liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of association, were neverrespected and indeed were constantly violated, despite the USSRs ratification in 1973 of the UNs

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

However, the USSR not only prioritised the second generation social and economic rights, but to a

considerable extent implemented them in practice. Adopted two years after the USSRs

participation in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 which launched the CSCE, the Brezhnev USSR

Constitution of 1977 (which provided the model for the 1978 Constitutions of the Russian

Federation (RSFSR) and the Union Republics) contained Chapter 7, entitled Basic Rights,

Freedoms and Obligations of the Citizens of the USSR. The promise of the right to work (Art.40),

the right to leisure (Art.41), the right to health care (Art.42), the right to social security (Art.43), the

right to housing (Art.44), the right to education (art.45), and the right to use the achievements ofculture (Art.46) were all, to a greater extent, as with work, education and health care, or to a lesser

extent, as with housing, fulfilled by the state.

The USSR ratified not only the ICCPR, but all the UN human rights treaties, however, until very late,

it insisted on the principle of non-interference in its internal affairs. This changed when, on 10

February 1989, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet passed a Decree recognising the

compulsory jurisdiction of the UNs International Court of Justice with respect to six UN human

rights conventions8. And on 5 July 1991 the Supreme Soviet adopted two Resolutions acceding to

the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on, and recognising the jurisdiction of, the

HRC9.

THE CSCE/OSCETHE CSCE/OSCETHE CSCE/OSCETHE CSCE/OSCE

Brownlie and Goodwin-Gill have correctly stated that the Council of Europe was an organisation

created in 1949 as a sort of social and ideological counterpart to the military aspects of European

co-operation represented by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. [It] was inspired partly by

interest in the promotion of European unity, and partly by the political desire for solidarity in the

face of the ideology of Communism. In other words, the Western European states wished to

demonstrate that they were as serious about the first generation, civil and political rights, as the

USSR and its allies undoubtedly were with regard to the second generation social and economic

rights.

But if the Council of Europe was a product of the onset of the Cold War, the CSCE/OSCE was the

fruit of the so-called period of dtente, from the late 1960s until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

in 1979. This was the achievement of Leonid Brezhnev, who was General Secretary of the CPSU

8Reported in (1989) 4 Interights Bulletin 3: the treaties were the 1948 Genocide Convention; the 1984 Convention

Against Torture: the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of Traffic of Persons; the 1952 Convention on the

Political Rights of Women; the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; and the 1979

Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.9

Vedomosti SSSR, 1991 No.29, pp. 842, 843


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from 1964 to 1982, and Richard Nixon, who was President of the USA from 1969 to 1974. The

Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE) was adoptedin Helsinki on 1 August 1975, as the culmination of a process which had started on 3 July 1973. It

was signed by 35 states including the USA and the USSR. There are now 56 participating states.

Unlike the EU and Council of Europe it is not a legal, treaty-based organisation, but is purely

political. Its strength is derived from the fact that, in addition to 54 European and former Soviet

states, the USA and Canada are members.

Under Section VII, entitled Respect for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, including the

Freedom of Thought, Conscience, Religion and Belief, the participating States recognised the

universal significance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

At the time, the Helsinki Final Act was seen as a diplomatic triumph for Brezhnev, whose chiefmotivation was to secure the ratification of the status quo in Europe, especially the divided

Germany. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) had been admitted to the United Nations (with

the Federal Republic of Germany) on 18 September 1973, and the GDRs participation in the

negotiations, and adherence to the Helsinki Final Act, gave its leader Erich Honecker a great deal of

satisfaction. Helsinki also contributed materially to the eventual demise of the GDR one of the

few states in history to have disappeared entirely - 14 years later, in 1989. The real effect of

Helsinki was that the GDR lost any remaining legitimacy in the eyes of its own population.

This was also the beginning of the end for the USSR. According to Gaddis10, " Brezhnev had

looked forward, [Anatoly] Dobrynin recalls, to the 'publicity he would gain... when the Soviet public

learned of the final settlement of the post war boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much'...'[Instead, the Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal

movement'... What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems - at least the

more courageous - could claim official permission to say what they thought." Gaddis also stated

that Although Reagan had opposed the Helsinki Conference, which he regarded - shortsightedly -

as having ratified Soviet control over Eastern Europe, by 1979 he was acknowledging that

"something [is] going on behind the Iron Curtain that we've been ignoring and [that offers] hope for

all mankind. . . . [A] little less dtente . . . and more encouragement to the dissidents might be

worth a lot of armoured divisions."11

One feature of the aftermath of Helsinki was that nothing much changed with regard to the USSRs

internal policy towards human rights activism the dissidents. The Soviet human rights movementhad come into existence in 1967, led and inspired by the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. In

1969 a group of some 14 activists, including Sergei Kovalyov, the future Russian Human Rights

10John Lewis Gaddis (2006) The Cold War: A New History (London: Penguin); cited at

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2L9A6JJKDA5S/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm11

John Lewis Gaddis (2004) lecture "Strategies of Containment: Post-Cold War Reconsiderations" at The Elliott

School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, 15 April, at

http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/news/transcripts/gaddis.html


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As the author commented in a previous EU-Russia Centre Review, it was not surprising that, on 25

July 2008, the daily Kommersant published an article entitled Russia to withdraw money fromOSCE15. The previous day, Igor Borisov of the Central Electoral Commission of the Russian

Federation had announced at a press conference that if the OSCE will not take the further steps on

the road to democracy then Moscow may refuse to pay its annual subscription to ODIHR. The

amount paid by Russia had fallen by half in the previous five years, and was by then $6 million a

year. At the same time, Mr Borisov declared that the CEC had in its possession facts according to

which the members of OSCEs monitoring missions included officers of Western intelligence

services. We had thought that OSCE would be the central pillar of European security, but it has

fallen into the hands of countries which use it in their own interests, a senior Russian diplomat

told Kommersant.

On 30 September 2010, the Russian MFA spokesman Andrei Nesterenko gave a briefing at theOSCE Review Conference opening in Warsaw16, in which he restated Russias grievances:

Russia has faithfully fulfilled and will continue to fulfil all the political commitments it

assumed within the OSCE. We urge all other member states to do the same. We call for

reviewing the political commitments that have been unjustly forgotten, such as the

freedom of movement/liberalisation of visa regimes in the first place We consider it

necessary to begin serious work on correcting imbalances in the work of the OSCE

institutions and field missions, which today, unfortunately, is characterised by a selective

approach and focuses mainly on the countries east of Vienna. We consistently advocate

transforming the OSCE into a fully fledged intergovernmental organisation that works

according to clearly defined, collectively agreed rules. An important step in this directionwould be adoption of a Charter of the OSCE.

Actually, in the present authors view, the final point is a rather constructive proposal.

THE COUNCIL OF EUROPTHE COUNCIL OF EUROPTHE COUNCIL OF EUROPTHE COUNCIL OF EUROPEEEE

The Council of Europes invitation to Russia and Russias political decisions to accede to the CoE on

28 February 1996 and to ratify the European Convention of Human Rights on 5 May 1998, were

truly controversial on both sides17. The USSR had considered that the principles of state sovereignty

and non-interference in internal affairs were the two cornerstones of international law, yet even the

Communists and nationalists in the Russian parliament voted in favour. Russia was now accepting

15Vladimir Solovyov and Irina Nagornikh Rossiya otzyvaet sredstva iz OBSE Kommersant No. 129(3946) of 25 July

2008, at http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=915660; shortened English version at

http://www.kommersant.com/p915660/OSCE_ODIHR_funding/16

http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/171aab5ddf3ec3c2c32575d7004629c8/e02dd77b9dcefc2fc32577b1002571f4?Op

enDocument (accessed on 14 November 2010)17

See Bill Bowring Russias Accession to the Council of Europe and Human Rights: Compliance or Cross-Purposes?

6 (1997) European Human Rights Law Review, 629; Bill Bowring, Russia's Accession to the Council of Europe and

Human Rights: Four Years On 4 (2000) European Human Law Review, 362


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an unprecedented degree of external supervision and intervention, with the prospect of compulsory

judgments and the payment of large sums of compensation. It was perhaps even more surprisingthat the Council of Europe was prepared to accept Russia, given that the First Chechen War was in

full swing.

The first judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) against Russia was that in

Burdov v. Russia18 in 2002. To Russias shame, failure to comply with the judgment of the ECtHR in

that case led to another judgment in 2009, Burdov v Russia No.219. In this case the applicant, a

veteran of Chernobyl, complained of the non-payment of compensation owed to him as the result

of judgments of the Russian courts and of the ECtHR. In this repeat complaint the ECtHR not only

ordered Russia to pay Mr Burdov 6,000, but also held that these violations originated in a

practice incompatible with the Convention which consists in the States recurrent failure to honour

judgment debts and in respect of which aggrieved parties have no effective domestic remedy.

The Court also delivered what is in effect the first pilot judgment against Russia, and ordered

that:

the respondent State must set up, within six months from the date on which the judgment

becomes final, an effective domestic remedy or combination of such remedies which

secures adequate and sufficient redress for non-enforcement or delayed enforcement of

domestic judgments in line with the Convention principles as established in the Courts

case-law;

The respondent State must grant such redress, within one year from the date on which the

judgment becomes final, to all victims of non-payment or unreasonably delayed payment

by State authorities of a judgment debt in their favour who lodged their applications with

the Court before the delivery of the present judgment and whose applications were

communicated to the Government

Russia has responded. On 25 March 2010 President Medvedev submitted a draft Federal Law On

compensation of citizens for violation of the right to a fair trial within reasonable time or the right

to execution of a judgment within a reasonable time. This law was designed to answer the

demands of the ECtHR in Burdov No.2 (above), and entered into force on 4 May 2010. The courts

have already started receiving applications.

Russia has lost a number of other high-profile cases in the Strasbourg Court. In May 2004, inGusinskiy v Russia20 the Court held that Russia had acted in bad faith in using the criminal justice

system to force a commercial deal, by arresting the TV magnate. In July 2004, in Ilacu and Others

v Moldova and Russia21 the majority of the Grand Chamber of the Court found that Russia rendered

support to Transdniestria, which broke away from Moldova, amounting to effective control. The

18Application no. 59498/00, Judgment of 7 May 2002

19Application no. 33509/04, Judgment of 15 January 2009

20Application no. 70276/01, Judgment of 19 May 2004

21Application no. 48787/99, Judgment of 8 July 2004


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first six Chechen applicants against Russia won their applications to Strasbourg in February

200522. In April 2005 in Shamayev and 12 others v Russia and Georgia23, the Court condemnedRussia for deliberately refusing to cooperate with the Court despite diplomatic assurances; and in

October 2002 the Court had given interim measures indicating to Georgia that Chechens who had

fled to Georgia should not be extradited to Russia pending the Courts consideration.

Perhaps the most scandalous case wasAleksanyan v Russia24. In April 2006, Mr Aleksanyan, then

the executive vice president of Yukos Oil Company, was detained on charges of embezzlement and

money laundering. He was diagnosed as HIV positive, and doctors recommended that he be given

antiretroviral treatment. However, Mr Aleksanyan was denied treatment. The Russian authorities

claimed both publicly and in submissions to the Court that Mr Aleksanyan had refused treatment;

this was refuted by documentary evidence. Mr Aleksanyan complained to the Strasbourg Court in

2006. On 28 November 2007, the Court issued an interim measure indicating that Russia mustsecure immediatelythe in-patient treatment of the applicant [Mr Aleksanyan] in a hospital

specialised in the treatment of AIDS and concomitant diseases. On 6 December 2007, the Court

expressed concern that the interim measure had not been fully executed and added that if

necessary the Government can take security measures in order to guarantee proper proceedings in

the conduct of the applicants case and secure his appearance at trial. On 21 December 2007, the

court again reminded the government that interim measures are binding, and warned that should

Mr Aleksanyan die in custody or his health deteriorate further because of a lack of proper

treatment, the ECtHR might hold Russia accountable for a violation of the right to life or for

inhuman and degrading treatment. In late January 2008, the Court again reminded the Russian

Government of the interim measure. Only on 6 February 2008 did the Simonovskiy District Court in

Moscow order that Mr Aleksanyans trial should be halted and that he should be treated25. Even

then there was a delay in allowing him to be treated outside prison.

Thus, the Russian Government disobeyed the clear and binding order of the Strasbourg Court,

repeated three times, for more than two months. On 22 December 2008, the Court found that

Russia had violated Article 3, 5 and 8 of the Convention, and furthermore, that by failing to comply

with the interim measures, the Russian Government also failed to honour its commitments under

Article 34 of the Convention.

Immediately following the judgment in Burdov No.2, the Russian judge on the Strasbourg Court,

Anatoliy Kovler, delivered a stark warning at a meeting with the Russian Constitutional Court in St

Petersburg on Friday 27 February 2009. Kovler reviewed the results for Russia before the ECtHR in2008 and asserted that, if Russia within the next six months failed to resolve the systemic

22These applicants were represented, from 2000, by the author and his colleagues from the European Human

Rights Advocacy Centre, which he founded, in partnership with the Russian human rights NGO Memorial, with

EU funding, in 2003.23

Application no. 36378/02, [2005] ECHR 233, Judgment of 12 April 200524

Application no. 46468/06, Judgment of 22 December 2008, available at:

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/496369822.html [accessed 14 November 2010]25

Pokoi strogogo rezhima, Novaya gazeta, 21 February 2008.


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problem of failure to execute court decisions, this could lead to termination of Russian

membership in the Council of Europe.

Kovler observed that 2008 had witnessed a falling dynamic and a saturated market of

complaints against Russia. In 2008, 10,500 applicants had complained to the ECtHR, however the

number of complaints found to be admissible had risen, while the number of judgments was a

record, 269. The Court had issued 40 findings of non-effective investigation of crimes in Chechnya,

and for the first time had found in more than 20 cases the absence of effective remedies for

Russians in relation to wrongful use of detention as a pre-trial measure of restraint, and in

relation to conditions in remand prisons (SIZOs). But the most glaring tendency of 2008 had been

the lengthy non-execution of judgments of Russian courts and the absence of a mechanism for

payment of damages by the government for unlawful actions of judges. Some 72% of judgments

against Russia at the ECtHR concerned this problem, and there were now more than 5,000 of themawaiting decisions. As I show below, this situation has further deteriorated.

At a conference in Moscow on Friday 18 December 2009, Judge Kovler, again focused on the

unprecedented number of applications made to the Court from Russia: 14,000 by the end of 2009,

a rise of 13-17%, and one third of the total number of applications to the Court from all 47 member

states. In Kovlers words, the question of conditions in the SIZOs (pre-trial detention prisons)

became actual in 2009 in connection with the Aleksanyan case and now this problem cries out

about itself in connection with the death in a SIZO of the lawyer Sergey Magnitsky. 26

After a very long delay, on Friday 15 January 2010 the State Duma voted to ratify Protocol 14 to

the ECHR27

. On 1 June 2010 Protocol 14 at last came into force, having been ratified by all 47member states of the Council of Europe28. However, the best estimates are that the procedural

reforms introduced may help to reduce the Courts workload by 25%, when, as can be seen, it

continues to increase at a very rapid rate.

Russia continues to be a major contributor to the ongoing crisis of the ECHR system. According to

the Courts statistics as of 1 January 2010, the total number of judgments against Russia since

accession was 862, of which 815 were violation judgments and 28 no violation judgments. There

were 36,083 inadmissibility decisions: a very high proportion of complaints against Russia are

dismissed without a hearing. But as of the start of this year, there were 33,568 applications

pending against Russia. Of course, Russias size and very large population, at least 140 million, are

factors, and Georgiy Matyushkin, Russias permanent representative and agent at the Court, has

26http://www.newsru.com/arch/russia/18dec2009/kovler.html (accessed on 26 April 2010)

27See http://www.newsru.com/arch/russia/15jan2010/14.html (last visited 21 July 2010), and Bill Bowring The

Russian Federation, Protocol No. 14 (and 14bis), and the Battle for the Soul of the ECHR Goettingen Journal of

International Law 2 (2010) 2, 589-61728

See Anton Burkov, Improvement in Compliance of the Russian Judicial System with the International

Obligations Undertaken by the Russian Federation (28 June 2010) available at http://www.eu-

russiacentre.org/our-publications/column/improvement-compliance-russian-judicial-system-international-

obligations-undertaken-russian-federation.html (last visited 21 July 2010).


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pointed out that if the number of applications are counted per 100,000 population, then Russia is

in 15th or 16th place out of 4729.

This is in the context in which as of the end of October 2010 there were 141,450 applications

pending, an increase of 19% from the same period in 2009. During the same period only 1,757

judgments were delivered, 3% fewer than in 2009, while 27,348 cases were found inadmissible or

struck out, an increase of 4%. It is readily apparent that the Court is drowning.

CONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSIONCONCLUSION

It may be seen from the analysis above that the context of the EUs human rights policy towards

Russia, as concerns the EUs partner international organisations is complex and not encouraging.

Russia has a record of continual protest with respect to the OSCE, and has been convicted many

times of flagrant violation of the ECHR. Yet as Burkov has shown, the Convention and its case-law,

which are part of Russian law, are increasingly referred to and sometimes followed in judicial

proceedings, and the new generations of lawyers are trained in the principles of the ECHR. Every

lawyer in Russia, and many people without legal representation, especially prisoners, have heard of

the Strasbourg Court, and the flood of applications that come from every part of Russia. That in

itself is a highly positive indicator. The European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, founded by the

author in 2003, with lawyers in Moscow and several regions, provides competent advice and

representation to hundreds of applicants, as do its sister organisations, Stichtung Russian Justice

Initiative, and Karina Moskalenkos Sodeistviye (Cooperation). And many Russian non-lawyers have

become rather expert. On 12 January 2011 the author and his EHRAC colleagues will represent the

applicant in Kotov v Russia30

before the Grand Chamber. Mr Kotov, representing himself without alawyer, won against Russia before the Chamber this will be Russias appeal. On the other hand,

Mr Kotov complained to the Court in 2000, ten years ago. This is in itself a dismal commentary on

the crisis of the system as a whole.

In the opinion of the author, the OSCE will have to look after itself, and there is probably little that

the EU could or should do to support it, other than developing a more focused and trenchant foreign

policy under the post-Lisbon arrangements.

The Council of Europe is another matter. The EU provides very significant funding for the Councils

initiatives, including awareness-raising and training in Russia. The author is an expert for the EU-

CoE Joint Programme on Minorities in Russia, and the EU has provided nearly 3 million for three

years. The objective of the Programme is to assist Russia in ratification of the CoEs European

Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The CoE and EU share the objective of protecting and

enhancing linguistic diversity. The EU itself organises and funds large-scale projects on judicial

reform and strengthening of the rule of law in Russia. The way forward must be an intensification

of this impressive effort.

29http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1375901 (accessed on 14 November 2010)

30Application No. 54522/00

Documents

EU Partners and their Responses to Russia