Russian Parliament votes to exit the European Court of Human Rights

Russia is leaving the jurisdiction of the ECtHR and even retroactively from March 15, 2022. Death penalty is to be restore in Russia.

Russian Parliament voted on June 7, 2022 in favor of the country leaving the European Court of Human Rights

This action formalized the already weakened ties between Russia and the Council of Europe, of which the ECtHR is a part.

The Russian parliament has approved two bills, one that excludes the country from the jurisdiction of the Court and a second that sets March 15 as the date of withdrawal, according to which anti-Russian rulings issued after that date will not be enforceable.

The bills were passed almost unanimously. Only one MP from the Communist Party voted against. It is expected to be signed by President Vladimir Putin in order to become state laws.

It is recalled that on March 15, 2022, Russia left the Council of Europe, to which the ECtHR also belongs.

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe was scheduled to vote in favor of Russia’s withdrawal on March 16, 2022, in response to Putin’s troop deployment to Ukraine in February.

Russia has said it has decided to leave the Council of Europe independently, with former President Dmitry Medvedev saying Russia’s departure was an opportunity to reinstate the death penalty, which is prohibited by international Council of Europe conventions.

Applications before the ECtHR had become the last resort for the applicant citizens in many cases they had not been acquitted in Russian courts.

“The European Court of Human Rights has become an instrument of political struggle against our country in the hands of Western politicians,” Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the lower house of the State Duma, said after the vote. “Some of its decisions were in direct conflict with the Russian constitution, our values ​​and our traditions,” he said in a statement.

In February 2021, the ECtHR ruled that Navalny, the country’s leading opposition figure, should be released after his imprisonment on charges he described as politically motivated. Russia has described the ECtHR ruling as “illegal”.

Russia was admitted to the Council of Europe in 1996 under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia’s voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe were revoked.

On March 15, 2022, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe decided to expel Russia from the organization in response to the deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine in February.