Vladimir Putin Emphasises Constitutional Court Role In Developing European Human Rights Standards

Russian president Vladimir Putin assigns an essential role to the Constitutional Court in developing the common European standards of human rights observance. Meeting representatives of foreign constitutional courts in the Kremlin, the Russian president emphasized it necessary to develop common European standards, for "we cannot as yet apply for international human rights standards". He also pointed to the importance of consistent protection of these rights. The issue of human rights standards was raised by Chairman of Lithuania's Constitutional Court Vladas Pavilonis. Putin noted that the Lithuanian representative had thus pointed to an important component of constitutional courts. During the Kremlin talks, Vladimir Putin emphasised the need of forming a system of implementing constitutional courts' decisions. According the president, implementation of the court decisions is still far from perfect in Russia. In this connection, he named cooperation and exchange of experience between the Russian and European courts as extremely significant.