Kosachyov hopes final version of Torshin bill to cause no conflict

MOSCOW, July 9 (Itar-Tass) -- The head of the State Duma's committee
on international affairs, Konstantin Kosachyov, hopes that the final
wording of the bill authored by FC member Alexander Torshin, which allows
for blocking decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), will
not lead to a conflict with that judicial authority. He expressed this
opinion of his in an interview on the round-the-clock news channel
Russia-24.
"The European Court of Human Rights in a number of its decisions
begins to go beyond its own competences and ventures onto the platform of
national competences of sovereign nations, dictating to them how to write
legislation, and even how to write their constitutions," he said, adding
that the wording of the bill had looked to him "very doubtful from the
beginning."
He is also convinced that not only Russia is concerned about this
problem.
"About the same emotions are experienced in Germany, in the UK, and in
many other European countries," said Kosachyov.
As the author of the initiative, first deputy speaker of the
Federation Council Alexander Torshin, told Itar-Tass earlier, the bill is
aimed at preventing the use of the European Court as an instrument of
pressure on the internal policies of Russia. According to the document, in
case of a conflict between an international treaty and a Russian law "the
international treaty enjoys priority," but in the event an interstate
authority (such as the Strasbourg Court) makes a decision implying
disagreement between the norm of the law and the treaty as interpreted by
the interstate authority, "it is necessary to assess the situation within
the hierarchy of the laws of the country." Only after such an assessment,
based on a comprehensive consideration of the issue through the prism of
articles of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, "a final decision
may be made on the applicability of the relevant rule of law or other
normative legal act," and such a decision can be made "only by the Russian
Constitutional Court."
Earlier, the European Parliament members expressed the hope that
Russian colleagues would oppose this bill.
"The Torshin initiative contradicts the basic principles of the
European Convention on Human Rights," they said in a statement.