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The 28th Conference of European Ministers of Justice took place in Spain between 24 and 26 October 2007. The Russian Federation Minister of Justice Vladimir V.
Ustinov, delivering his remarks to the participants of the Conference, touched upon essential issues related to access to justice for loosely protected groups of population, such as children, juvenile offenders and migrants. You may find information about the Conference on the pages of our journal.
In Strasbourg, on 7 June 2007, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the case of OAO Plodovaya Kompaniya v. Russia.
The applicant in the case is a large Russian producer of a number of brands of vodka and derivatives. It has appropriated the legal succession of a State enterprise, which enabled the applicant company to use such world-known trademarks as Vodka Stolichnaya, Vodka Moskovskaya and other brands of Russian vodka as its own property and in its own commercial interests. In its application submitted to the European Court the applicant company alleged that the final and binding judgment in the arbitrage proceedings, it was a party to, was quashed by way of the supervisory review procedure allegedly in breach of Articles 6, 13, 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Article 1 of the Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.
However, the European Court did not consider propositions of the applicant company to be well-founded and completely dismissed its claims.
The applicant company, having disagreed with such a judgment rendered by the Chamber of the Court, appealed against the judgment, i.e. filed a request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber. However, a panel of five judges of the Grand Chamber empowered to review such requests (under Article 43 of the European Convention of Human Rights), having reviewed the request of the applicant company, did not accept it, thus upholding the reasonableness of the Chamber’s findings.
In this issue of the journal, we publish the OAO Plodovaya Kompaniya judgment in two languages, English and Russian, in the section «Case of current importance».
This is truly case of current importance, since the Court did not handle too many cases where the applicants contested judgments of Russian courts of arbitrage, especially those cases that concerned the supervisory review procedure in those courts. But what is most important is how the Court examined the applicant company’s claims with respect to alleged violations of Article 1 of the Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. The matter is quite essential, considering that the transfer of property rights from State enterprises to private individuals and private legal entities in the Russian Federation is not assessed unambiguously.
The European Court reiterated «<…> its established case-law that a “claim” can constitute a “possession” within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 only if it is sufficiently established to be enforceable <…>». A transfer of property rights may occur only by way of the statutory procedure.
This issue of the journal offers our readers an article by Mr Dean Spielmann, the judge of the European Court elected in respect of Luxembourg, «Separate opinions and secrecy of judges’ deliberations in the European Court of Human Rights». The material is of interest for Russian readers, because, inter alia, analogous institutions — dissenting opinion of a judge and secrecy of judges’ deliberations — also exist in the Russian legal system.
Judges of the European Court very often use their right to file a separate opinion, which is directly related to the secrecy of judges’ deliberations. The two institutions have their special features and are somewhat different from the analogous institutions in the Russian Federation.
The year of 2007 is coming to an end. During next year, we will continue publishing translations of all judgments by the Grand Chamber of the European Court, most interesting judgments and decisions by the Chambers of the Court with special attention given to judgments and decisions on applications against Russia.
In each issue of the journal, you will find an article of current importance on the issues covered by the journal.
Next year we hope to continue carrying on an active dialogue with you, our dear readers!
We wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Vitaly Portnov

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