Legal issue: whether this Protocol contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation  — 1) as far as the procedure for its adoption is concerned, and 2) as to the contents of its provisions as far as the latter: а) entail the extension to the Russian Federation of the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes which envisages the establishing and functioning of Dispute Settlement Body within the World Trade Organisation, and also b) establish specific obligations of the Russian Federation with regard to the admission to rendering legal services in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Ratio decidendi: the Court has deemed the Protocol in question to be in conformity with the Constitution both as regards the procedure for its adoption at the stage of its signing and approval by the Government of the Russian Federation and as regards the contents of the contested rules. In so doing, the Court pointed out that:

• since any international treaty relating to key issues of the economic policy of the Russian Federation cannot avoid affecting the interests of all the regions (constitutive entities) of the Russian Federation, the suggestion to conduct conciliation procedures with all of them would contradict the legal nature of Russia as the sole holder of State sovereignty.  Only those international treaties of Russia must be conciliated with the authorities of certain regions, which place functional encumbrances upon those particular regions;
• the Constitution of the Russian Federation not only avoids forbidding the establishment, by way of an international treaty, of bodies for the settlement of disputes arising in connection with the performance by the Russian Federation of the obligations ensuing from the treaty, whose decisions may have binding force upon parties thereto, but, on the contrary, it directly acknowledges the possibility of Russia’s participation in such international agreements;
• a literal interpretation of the Protocol leads to the conclusion that the Russian Federation does not assume any international obligations as regards the categories of persons having the right to represent a party to the proceedings before the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation;
• interpreting the respective provision of the Protocol as establishing a mandatory requirement of participation of an advocate when resolving disputes in courts of arbitration would contradict the nature of arbitration which presupposes the highest possible freedom of parties in determining the composition of the court, its competence and the procedure for resolving cases in such courts. The expression used in the Protocol - Russian arbitration tribunals – should be understood as “Russian State arbitrazh (commercial) courts”;
• adoption by the Russian Federation of international obligations enabling foreign citizens to work as patent attorneys in the territory of the Russian Federation does not per se endanger the information security of the State, because it does not imply their right to access the data constituting state secrecy outside the limits of the procedures established by the current legislation of the Russian Federation, which contains sufficient guarantees for the protection of the data whose dissemination may be detrimental to the security of the Russian Federation.