European Union

29/09/2021

Ministers and Dissertations: Academic Fraud Scandals and Their Political Consequences in Russia and the EU

A 2013 ‘word of the year’ in Russia was Dissernet, the name of an emerging informal network that set out to investigate infractions of academic integrity in Russia – in particular, to expose plagiarism in the dissertations of high-ranking academics and politicians.
31/03/2021

All in the Same Boat?

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, it seemed that we were all equally vulnerable to the coronavirus, which did not discriminate by gender, ethnicity, social status or income. Politicians said that we were all in the same boat. It soon became apparent, however, that this was not entirely true.
11/01/2021

Brexit: implications for human rights in the UK

How are Brexit and human rights related? Simon Cosgrove, the Chair of the Trustees of "Rights in Russia", in his column reflects on how Britain's exit from the EU has impacted the present and future of human rights.
09/11/2020

National Sovereignty or International Law? The Russian Constitution Has the Last Word

On January 2020, President Putin called for amending the Russian Constitution to establish its precedence over supranational judicial bodies, meaning, primarily, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Interestingly, this was not a new idea: Russian legal experts who for many years have been suggesting such an amendment to the Constitution had referred to German precedent.
09/10/2020

Memory Laws in Russia and Other Restrictions on Freedom of Expression

Under the European Convention on Human Rights, states must guarantee free and open debates about the past. Yet, with the rise of memory laws, the right to free expression has been endangered.
18/06/2020

A Mentally Healthy Society: Respecting Human Rights and Reducing Social Inequality as a Way to Well-Being

What will psychiatry of the future look like and how does respecting human rights affect the mental health of citizens? Claudia Marinetti, director of the largest European mental health organisation, talks about this (and much more).
13/02/2020

The Future of Human Rights and the Council of Europe: The Need for a Reset

The EU-Russia Legal Dialogue symposium was held in Berlin on October 31–November 2, 2019. Its theme was “The Role of Civil Society in the Council of Europe: Strengthening Mechanisms to Address Current Challenges in Human Rights and the Rule of Law.” Lawyers and representatives of NGOs discussed how to interact with the Council of Europe in the current political conjuncture.
23/12/2019

Italian Immigration Policy, 2018–2019: From Odyssey to Safe Haven?

“We have just heard that we have been assigned a place of safety. We are now on our way to the island of Lampedusa in Italy”. This is the message by an aid worker of Médecins Sans Frontières sent out to 82 rescued Libyan refugees. The permission to land rings in a new beginning in Italian migration policy, which might have an effect on a broadly and long-discussed topic also on the European level.
13/05/2019

Austria’s Going Backwards on Gender Equality

Since the swearing-in of the incumbent Austrian government in December 2017, journalists, feminists and representatives of women’s rights organisations all over the country regularly protest against the attempted changes made by the government in the country’s gender politics achieved during the last 50 years
05/04/2019

Incendiary Content

The Council of Europe and the European Union have been trying to curb hate speech on the internet, but social networks are at loggerheads with the human rights paradigm.
23/01/2019

Ballot Selfies and Freedom of Expression: European Court of Human Rights Approach

The Legal Dialogue Grant Programme has made it possible for Russian lawyers Yana Zagorskaya and Artyom Lapov to attend a hearing at the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The Grand Chamber deliberated whether taking and sharing photographs of one’s ballot paper was acceptable and whether it could affect the electoral process.
22/10/2018

Marine Plastic Pollution: Can Law Help?

While the prevention of waste pollution of the marine environment is ensured by several legal documents on international, regional and national levels, the effectiveness of such initiatives is still not clear.