Activity Details (ID# 6925)

Activity Synopsis

The general objective of the training seminar was to present to the judges from St-Petersburg municipal and regional courts the general principles developed by the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 10 of the ECHR and its application as regards defamation, insult, criticism of public figures, privacy, incitement to hatred, access to information, protection of sources, state secrecy and whistle-blowing.

Besides this general objective, there was also a particular practical objective to examine two case studies related to some of the explained subjects and prepared by the two CoE experts, namely Mr Vincent COUSSIRAT-COUSTERE, Professor of Public Law at the University of Lille II (France) and Mr Pascal DOURNEAU-JOSETTE, Lawyer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights.
 

The seminar was very well organised by the State University of St-Petersburg. Council of Europe documents concerning freedom of expression, translated into Russian, were distributed to the participants (case-law concerning Article 10 of the ECHR, a number of Recommendations concerning freedom of expression adopted by the Committee of Ministers).
The experts’ presentations were informative and provoked active participation on the part of judges in the discussion. They were especially interested by presentations and cases concerning defamation, privacy, criticism of public figures, and state secrets. They discussed similar cases in Russia and compared the decisions with European Court decisions.

Given the high qualification of judges, they were quite well informed about several principles concerning Article 10 and the Convention in general. At the same time, they confessed that the Convention is far from being applied on a daily basis in Russia. For instance, some magistrates are still hesitant to clearly apply the standards of the European Court as concerns defamation or criticism of political figures. Also, discussion on access to court proceedings provoked a particular interest.

 

At the end of the seminar, an evaluation questionnaire was distributed to the participants. According to the replies, most participants were very interested in Article 10 case law and in ECHR issues in general. They suggested further follow-up activities, expressing their wish to continue this kind of trainings, in order to become more familiar with the ECHR and to be able to apply in their daily practice the principles developed in the case law related to Article 10.

Several participants suggested continuing translation into Russian of the case-law of the ECHR.


 

Judges from St-Petersburg municipal and regional courts

 

Mr Vincent COUSSIRAT-COUSTERE, Professor at the University of Lille-II (France)
Mr Pascal DOURNEAU-JOSETTE, Lawyer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights
 

Eugen CIBOTARU, Programme Advisor, Media Division, Directorate General of Human Rights