This article deals with the theoretical, legal, and practical aspects of filing inter-state complaints to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and their consideration by the Court. It de-scribes the evolution, essence, and current legal regulation of the institution of inter-state applica-tion expressed in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) and the ECtHR's regulations. The article compares the qualitatively different complaints filed by post-Soviet states with those lodged by the so-called senior members of the Council of Europe (CoE) and examines the possible correlation between them. The article describes to what extent the inter-state application is the primary mechanism for ensuring verification of mutual compliance with the provisions of the ECHR as objective obligations, and to what extent it reflects the political aspirations of states-parties. However, the analysis shows that, in the vast majority of cases, states submit complaints in order to obtain short-term political and economic benefits. It has been shown that some inter-state applications are in fact disguised individual complaints.
