Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins: Latvia is interested in efficient functioning of European Court of Human Rights

On 18 - 19 February, Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins took part at a high level conference on the future of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) in Interlaken, Switzerland, the main purpose of which was to assess the existing challenges faced by the Court and to debate the prospective reform measures.

In his address to the conference participants, Minister Riekstins stressed that Latvia as a member of the Council of Europe was interested in smoother operations of the Court and the reduction of the length of proceedings. While expressing Latvia's position, Mr Riekstins noted that the Court should aim at a uniform application of the basic criteria for admissibility of applications, not lower than those applied by national courts. Minister Riekstins also indicated that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe was faced with an enormous backlog of cases, which would only increase after the entry into force of Protocol 14. Therefore, a solution could be found by having the Committee of Ministers in its full composition of 47 deal only with cases requiring urgent measures or touching upon structural problems, while other cases should be dealt within sub-committees consisting of few States. The Minister emphasized that in Latvia's view the discussion concerning future reform of the Court should go hand-in-hand with the on-going Council of Europe reform process and its budgetary implications.

The Conference on the Future of the European Court of Human Rights in Interlaken is held as part of events of Switzerland's presidency in the Council of Europe.

In May 2004, Protocol 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights was opened for signing. Until now, the Russian Federation obstructed the coming into effect of the Protocol which lays down a number of measures for raising the effectiveness of the ECHR work. In January 2010, Protocol 14 was ratified by the Duma of the Russian Federation. Over the recent years, however, it has become clear that the envisaged improvements will not present a solution effective enough to allow the ECHR to handle the huge number of applications lodged each year.

According to statistics, currently there are over 119,000 applications pending at the European Court of Human Rights. 57,000 new applications were lodged in 2009, which exceeds by 15% the numbers for previous years. Last year, the ECHR passed 35,460 rulings out of which judgments were delivered in more than 2000 cases, but over 33,000 cases were closed by the Court's decision. 

The Conference declaration:

http://www.eda.admin.ch/etc/medialib/downloads/edazen/topics/europa/euroc.Par.0133.File.tmp/final_en.pdf

 

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