New doctoral thesis: Compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and international socialization

This thesis is a compilation thesis, which consists of four distinct articles and an introduction. Using insights from international law, political science and international relations, the thesis focuses on (non)compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) by two former Soviet states—Lithuania and Russia—which joined the Council of Europe and the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) during the 1990s. In March 2022, Russia was expelled from the organization due to its full-scale invasion of another member state: Ukraine.

"The Council of Europe (CoE) was founded in 1949 by ten Western European democracies with the aim of preventing history from repeating itself through closer cooperation between “like-minded” states and the protection of basic human rights. The ECHR and the ECtHR were envisioned as the guarantors of democracy and peace in the region. When the Soviet Union collapsed the CoE embraced a new role—namely, to “socialize” its new members from Central and Eastern Europe (most of which joined the organization during the 1990s and the 2000s) into its norms and values. In my thesis, I argue that compliance with judgments of the ECtHR can be regarded as both an indicator and an instrument of such socialization", explains Ausra.

The ECHR is a unique human rights treaty because of its relatively strong enforcement mechanism. First, compliance by states parties with norms of the Convention is monitored by the ECtHR, the jurisdiction of which since 1998 is compulsory. Second, pursuant to Article 46(1), states are legally obliged to comply with final judgments of the ECtHR issued in cases against them. Finally, such compliance is supervised by the Committee of Ministers, a political body composed of countries’ Ministers of Foreign Affairs or their deputies, which, among other things, has the power to initiate the so-called infringement proceedings and, ultimately, suspend and expel a non-compliant state from the organization.

When the system was created, the founding fathers relied strongly on their governments’ commitment to democratic norms as the main guarantor of judgment compliance. In addition, a democratic regime type is also often seen as central to compliance in existing literature on both compliance with international law and international socialization.

"To test these propositions, I examine compliance with judgments of the ECtHR by Lithuania – a young democracy with relatively strong domestic institutions, and Russia – an increasingly authoritarian state. The thesis focuses on both the responses of these two states to judgments of the ECtHR and the ability of existing mechanisms to induce compliance."

The findings of the study show that defining and measuring both compliance with judgments of the ECtHR and international socialization poses considerable challenges. Moreover, whereas Lithuania’s overall compliance is higher than that of Russia, it does not comply with all the cases. Thus, the thesis argues that compliance in both countries is determined by the domestic costs of compliance and that the existing compliance-inducing mechanisms have a limited effect on compliance by both countries. Whereas Russia openly challenges the obligation in Article 46(1) to comply with judgments of the ECtHR, Lithuania’s non-compliance is more subtle and nuanced.

"At the same time, the question that this thesis asks is whether both types of non-compliance, despite their differences, risk eroding the authority of the obligation set forth in Article 46(1) and preventing the CoE from achieving its goals described earlier", Ausra concludes.

Ausra Padskocimaite is a doctoral student at both Department of Law and the IRES Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University.