Seite - 13 - in Austrian Law Journal, Band 1/2020

ALJ 2020 Benedek 12 Europeanization of the Russian legal system.39 However, a degradation in the relationship can be observed since about 2008 and in particular 2012 when the Court decided some cases against the expectations of the RF. The cases of Markin, Catan and Others and Alekseyev need to be highlighted in this context.40 With the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Western counter-measures this trend was reinforced. But the Russian attitude towards Western values also changed as a result of its decision to rather develop a Russian nativist approach.41 The situation culminated in 2018, when the Duma gave the Constitutional Court new powers to review the conformity of the judgments of the ECtHR with the constitution of the Russian Federation. Although in practice these new powers have only been used in two cases42 so far, the RF can now feel more at ease to deny the enforcement of Court judgments, which in some cases has been slow anyway.43 Still, with a compliance rate of 26.53% (2017) the performance of the RF has been better than the performance of several other member states while the Council of Europe average is 72.6%.44 It can be taken as a positive sign that in 2019 the RF found a way to comply with the judgment in Anchugov and Gladkov as announced by the Council of Europe although the Russian Constitutional Court at the time had held that it was impossible to comply.45 The Council of Europe member state Azerbaijan is known for problems of compliance. In the notorious Mammadov case, the Committee of Ministers for the first time used the infringement procedure under Article 46 (4) ECHR referring the case to the European Court of Human Rights for refusal to abide by a final judgment. The Grand Chamber of the Court unanimously found a violation.46 In the context of the work of PACE it was found that Azerbaijan had bribed several PACE members with gifts and high payments, which raised the question of the credibility of the institution. PACE finally reacted to the revelations mainly coming from the NGO “European Stability 39 See Alexei Trochev, The Russian Constitutional Court and the Strasbourg Court: judicial pragmatism in a dual state, in RUSSIA AND THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, THE STRASBOURG EFFECT 125-149 (Lauri Mälksoo, Wolfgang Benedek eds. Cambridge University Press. 2018); see also Bill Bowring, Russia and the Council of Europe: an incompatible ideology, and a transplanted legal regime? in RUSSIAN DISCOURSES ON INTERNATIONAL LAW (P. Sean Morris ed., Routledge 2019). 40 See the decisions on Konstantin Markin v. Russia, Application no. 30078/06 of 2012 (GC), Catan and Others v. Moldova and Russia, Applications nos. 43370/04, 8252/05 and 18404/06 of 2012 (GC) as well as Alekseyev v. Russia, Applications nos. 4916/07, 25924/08 and 14599/09 of 2011; see also Bill Bowring, Russia’s cases in the ECtHR and the question of implementation, in RUSSIA AND THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, THE STRASBOURG EFFECT 188-221 (Lauri Mälksoo, Wolfgang Benedek eds. Cambridge University Press. 2018). 41 See Benedikt Harzl, Nativist ideological responses to European/liberal human rights discourses in contemporary Russia, in RUSSIA AND THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, THE STRASBOURG EFFECT 355-384 (Lauri Mälksoo, Wolfgang Benedek eds. Cambridge University Press. 2018). 42 See the cases of Anchugov and Gladkov, Application nos. 11157/04 and 15162/05 of 2013 dealing with voting rights of prisoners and of Yukos (just satisfaction), Application no. 14902/04 of 2014 concerning property rights. The latter concerned a compensation of 1.9 Bio EUR. 43 Bill Bowring, Russia’s cases in the ECtHR and the question of implementation, in RUSSIA AND THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, THE STRASBOURG EFFECT 188-221 (Lauri Mälksoo, Wolfgang Benedek eds. Cambridge University Press. 2018). 44 See Elisabeth Lambert, The first infringement proceedings within the European system of human rights: Using the Court as a last bastion for the credibility of the Council of Europe, EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW 325-335 (2018); see also Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, Supervision of the Execution of Judgments and Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights 2019, 13th Annual Report, Council of Europe 2020. 45 See CM/ResDH(2019)240 of Sep. 25, 2019. 46 Lambert, supra note 44; see European Court of Human Rights, Proceedings under Article 46 § 4 in the case of Ilgar Mammadov v. Azerbaijan (Application no. 15172/13), Judgment of May 29, 2019 (GC).