Chairman of the Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has delivered a lecture on correlation between international and national law to the students of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Bastrykin noted that “the principle of supremacy of the international law set out in the Russian Constitution was made so absolute that the issue of revising it has not been raised in Russia legislation or Russian legal science”. Having analyzed law enforcement practice, Mr. Bastrykin made a number of examples, including case Katan and others versus Moldavia and Russia (when the European Human Rights Court found Russia guilty of violating rights of 170 citizens of Moldavia by abolition of schools teaching in Moldavian in Pridnestrovie) and made a conclusion that “the European Human Rights Court and other international courts often apply provisions of international acts against other states one-sidedly and misrepresenting”.
Therefore, the Chairman believes that “renunciation of absolute priority of international law and its automatic, absolute implementation in the Russian national legislation undoubtedly becomes the problem of ensuring our sovereignty – legal, economic, political, ideological and state one”.
At the same time, Mr. Bastrykin drew attention to the necessity of improving current legal mechanisms in the area of extraterritorial criminal prosecution by competent law-enforcement bodies of Russia of people committing international, military and other crimes, including those against the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens abroad. During the lecture professors of corresponding MGIMO departments weighed in.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
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