Russia is concerned about the fact that more than one-third of judges at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have been elected without the participation of Russian lawmakers because of the crisis in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland.
"The number of petitions against Russia sent to the ECHR has dropped more than three times over the past five years. Since no one and nothing in this world is perfect, we would like the court itself to improve its effectiveness and, most importantly, to comply with the subsidiarity principle its work is based on," the minister stressed.
"We cannot but be concerned about the fact that, because of the PACE crisis, more than one-third of the judges at the ECHR have been elected without the participation of a delegation of Russian lawmakers. That makes your efforts and efforts by all those who want to overcome that crisis relying on the underlying principles of the Council of Europe all the more important," TASS cited Lavrov as saying.
