MOSCOW, December 6 (RAPSI) – Dmitry Krasnov, the Chairman of the Russia’s Council of Judges, has declared the IX Congress of Judges open, RAPSI reports from the House of Unions in central Moscow, located next door to the Kremlin, on Tuesday.

The Congress is to continue for three days, from December 6 through December 8. It is expected that more than 700 representatives of higher courts, general jurisdiction courts, commercial and military courts, as well as judges of the peace and Russia’s Constitutional Court will attend.

Guido Raimondi, the President of the European Court of Human Rights, addressed the Congress saying it was a mark of honor for ECHR to participate in the forum on the twentieth anniversary of Russia joined the Council of Europe thus entering the common legal space built with participation of Strasbourg. Noting the progress Russia made since 1998, the year it ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, Raimondi said that Russia was no longer the biggest source of applications to the Court as there were other states that now accounted for a greater number of cases sent to Strasbourg.

The National Congress of Judges is the supreme body of the national judiciary vested with the authority to regulate its activities. Justices of peace, district court judges, judges of the courts of the Russian Federation subjects, representatives of military and commercial courts, as well as of higher courts, among them the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, are eligible to be elected as delegates of Congresses of Judges. The Congresses are convened every four years by Russia’s Council of Judges. The first Congress took place in October of 1991.