ECHR Blog has reported that the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote a letter in April to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe expressing its concern over the way in the Russian candidates for a judicial at the European Court of Human Rights were selected by the Russian Federation. The letter requested that PACE send back the submitted list of three candidates. Guidelines for the selection process have been reported previously in the Bulletin.
The letter from HRW stated that there were “serious deficiencies in the selection procedure used to select candidates from the Russian Federation for election to the European Court of Human Rights. We believe the procedure used falls far short of the most recent set of Guidelines adopted by the Committee of Ministers on the selection of candidates for the post of judge’. The shortfalls in the selection procedure were identified by HRW as follows; the contest period was very brief and during a period when many people take summer holidays, the call for applications was inadequately publicised and only published in a specialised paper only after the deadline for accepting applications had passed and finally there were problems with the constitution of the commission empowered to select candidates.
The letter from the HRW ended with the request; "we urge the sub-committee, in the interest of ensuring that all qualified candidates be given an opportunity to apply, and in order to protect confidence in the European Court, to take such a stand now and return the list of applicants to the Russian Federation".