Address by Mr Māris Riekstiņš, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia at the High-level Conference on the future of the European Court of Human Rights, Interlaken, February 18, 2010 [19 Feb 2010]

Madame Chairperson, 

Dear colleagues,

I would like to express my appreciation of the efforts made by the organizers to bring together high representatives of States, the Council of Europe, the Court and non-governmental organizations to discuss future reform measures to assist the Court to deal with the enormous backlog of cases it currently has. Indeed, the Court's recently published statistics showing that there were 119,000 pending applications at the end of 2009 is a source of serious concern.

It is clear now that Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights will soon enter into force, thus becoming an important tool allowing the Court to better meet present day realities and deal with cases more efficiently. Unfortunately, it is also clear that measures foreseen by Protocol 14 will no longer be sufficient and therefore further reform is necessary.

Moreover, with the accession of the European Union to the Convention, the Court will have a new power to examine applications submitted against an international entity, thus creating an additional burden on the Court.

Regardless of the efforts made by States and the Council of Europe in seeking solutions to the existing challenges, it is also up to the Court itself to review its working methods. First and foremost, the Court should aim at a uniform application of the basic criteria for admissibility. The Court should not have lower requirements to its applicants than national courts. In this respect, I believe that Handbook on Admissibility could play an important role in providing comprehensive and objective information to potential applicants.

Single judge formation and extended powers of committees of three judges introduced by Protocol 14 is a response to the invitation to introduce more efficient filtering mechanisms within the Court to deal with clearly inadmissible applications and with well-founded applications subject to the established case-law of the Court. I would like to note, that we can commence discussions concerning possible new filtering mechanisms only after efficiency of the already introduced mechanisms has been assessed.

I believe that while considering the secondment of national judges and lawyers to the Registry of the Court, the danger of creating a conflict of interests or interfering with the Court's judicial independence should be taken into account.

I believe that reform of the supervision of execution of judgments must ensure that not only cases requiring urgent individual measures or structural problems are addressed, but also provide effective and timely supervision of execution of every judgment delivered by the Court. Presently, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe is faced with an enormous backlog of cases, which will only increase after the entry into force of Protocol 14. 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.

Dear colleagues,

Last but not least in Latvia's view the discussion concerning future reform of the Court should go hand-in-hand with the debate about the on-going Council of Europe reform process and its budgetary implications.

Thank you!