Russia may be expelled from Council of Europe

Russia’s refusal to comply with all, without exception, rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will lead to the country’s expulsion from the Council of Europe.

This was stated by President of the ECHR Guido Raimondi in Strasbourg, Yevropeiska Pravda (European Truth) online newspaper reports.

He recalled that the member states of the Convention on Human Rights were obliged to enforce the judgments of the ECHR and there were no exceptions to this rule.

In particular, the commitment to enforce the judgments is stipulated in Article 46 of the Convention.

“It is necessary to distinguish between the difficulties in enforcement and refusals. The latter cases are rather rare, they can be counted on one hand. However, we cannot underestimate them,” Raimondi said.

As known, Russia is the only country that directly stated it would not enforce the judgments of the ECHR. The Russian lawmakers plan to give the Constitutional Court the right to choose what ECHR rulings may not be enforced. The failure to enforce a separate judgment (voting rights of convicts) was previously stated by Britain, but London finally said they were looking for a way to enforce it.

Raimondi considers that the official refusal should be followed by the country’s expulsion from the Council of Europe.

“The logic is either you comply with Article 46 or not. If not, if your national system does not accept the decisions of the court [ECHR], then you cannot remain in this organization. You cannot stay within the system if you deny the binding decisions of the ECHR,” he stressed.