In his speech to the First Petersburg International Legal Forum, Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland called for an important reform of the Russian legal system. "A large part of cases concerning Russia which are before the European Court of Human Rights are appeals to decisions taken by the regional courts of some 80 federal entities of the Russian Federation. In my view, a final national decision in a huge country like Russia should necessarily be delivered by a supreme national judicial instance at the federal level, be it a Supreme Court or the Constitutional Court", said Jagland. (more ...)

Speech by Thorbjørn Jagland