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In 2007, we are continuing publication of materials and documents related to the activity of the European Court of Human Rights: in the current issue, we offer statistical information about the Court for September 2006 and now we have formed a monthly chronicle of cases against Russia.

The information section related to the activity of the Council of Europe is expanded. We published the official information on the Council of Europe made public by the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the organisation chart of the Secretariat of the Council of Europe, press releases and other information by the Council of Europe on the current issues of the Organisation’s activity.

In order to provide our readers with more detailed information on the Council of Europe we publish an article by Mr Fredrik Sundberg, member of the Editorial Board of the journal, Principal Administrator at the Department for the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.

We hope that our readers will be interested to know the viewpoint of Mme Eva Gotsiridze, who in her article “Life before and after birth: the context of the approach by the European Court of Human Rights” has offered her insightful analysis of the issue of “the right of foetus to life”. A uniform legal approach has not yet been reached either on national or international level on this issue.

The issue of the journal contains, as is customary, translations of most essential judgments of the Court in cases against Russia and other High Contracting Parties; the Russian texts of the published material are found in our journal only. In Popov v. Russia, the Court rejected several complaints by the applicant; however, the Court also found that there had been violations of Articles 3 and 6 of the Convention, as regarded conditions of detention of the applicant in the places of incarceration and of provision of medical assistance to him; a violation of Article 34 of the Convention was found too. The case of Öllinger v. Austria touches upon another important subject: striking a proper balance between confl icting interests in the context of Article 11 of the Convention, securing the freedom of assembly. In the case, the authorities banned one assembly in order to prevent a clash with members of another assembly.

We plan to publish the bibliography on the European Convention and the European Court annually in the fi rst issue of the journal. The publication will enable readers to learn what has been written in Russian on the Convention and the Court.

Finally, as you noticed the journal had changed, i.e. it now has a different design. We will also work hard to constantly improve the quality of the published materials.

Vitaly Portnov

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