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| Russia MPs support rights reform | Russia MPs support rights reform |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Russia's lower house of parliament has backed a long-delayed reform to the European Court of Human Rights. | Russia's lower house of parliament has backed a long-delayed reform to the European Court of Human Rights. |
| Before Friday's vote Russia was the only one of the Council of Europe's 47 member states that had not ratified Protocol 14. | Before Friday's vote Russia was the only one of the Council of Europe's 47 member states that had not ratified Protocol 14. |
| The court based in Strasbourg, eastern France, has a huge backlog of cases. | |
| Protocol 14 is part of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. It was ratified by 392 Duma deputies, with 56 against. | |
| Ratification in the upper house, the Federation Council, is expected to be a formality. | Ratification in the upper house, the Federation Council, is expected to be a formality. |
| Russia faces the largest number of cases pending before the court - 28% of the total. | |
| The Duma had refused to ratify Protocol 14 in 2006, with deputies alleging that it was incompatible with Russian law. | |
| But after a Council of Europe meeting on 14 December, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said the Council had agreed that a Russian judge would participate in any decisions concerning Russia. | |
| Streamlining court's work | |
| Protocol 14 would cut down the number of judges on panels charged with deciding issues such as the admissibility of cases. | |
| It also paves the way for new rules to ensure that states implement fundamental changes to national laws or practices, as ordered by the court, European affairs analyst William Horsley says. | |
| Experts say the changes would speed up the handling of cases by up to 25%. | |
| Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov said that of the 112,000 cases currently before the European Court 27,000 were filed by Russian citizens. | |
| He said ratification of the protocol would turn the court into a "really working and depoliticised agency", Itar-Tass news agency reported. |