MOSCOW, February 11 (RAPSI) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2013 turned down 23,845 out of 24,100 complaints received against Russia, Russian Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev said on Tuesday during a seminar in Moscow.

129 rulings were made in cases concerning Russia, and 40 pointed to violations of the right to fair trial, Chief Justice Lebedev added. As head of the Supreme Court, he ordered the 39 lower courts’ rulings to be amended in accordance with the ECHR recommendations.

According to the ECHR’s annual press release, Russia maintained the highest number of  judgments finding at least one violation of the Convention (119 judgments), followed by  Turkey (118), Romania (83), Ukraine (65), Hungary (40), Italy (34) and Greece (32). In addition, at  31 December 2013, the majority of pending cases were against Russia (16.8%), Italy (14.4%), Ukraine  (13.3%) and Serbia (11.3%).

During the address to the annual press conference of the European Court of Human Rights on 30 January2014, President Spielmann noted that after the adoption of Protocol No. 14, the number of pending cases dropped from 160,000 in September 2011, to 99,900 cases by the end of 2013. The Protocol was aimed to make the changes such as the introduction of a new admissibility criterion, the treatment of repetitive cases or clearly inadmissible cases, for a more satisfactory operation of the European Court of Human Rights.