Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-EU: Concern Raised over Court Reform

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, May 12 2004 (IPS) - The European Union must ensure that reform of the European Court of Human Rights does not compromise its role in preventing human rights violations, says Amnesty International.

The human rights organisation is urging the Council of Europe, which defends human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law within the European Union (EU), to ensure that the reform of the regional human rights court in Strasbourg “does not curtail the possibility for individuals to gain redress for human rights violations.”

Amnesty is calling for the Council’s committee of ministers to reject proposals to add new admissibility criteria for the Court of Human Rights.

It says the new measures “would curtail the right of individuals to receive binding judgments on whether their rights under the European Convention have been violated.”

Amnesty is urging the Council of Europe to uphold the “integrity” of the values of the court.

“At a time when human rights, including the right to fair trial and the absolute prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, are under attack, it is imperative that the Council of Europe maintains the integrity of the system it has established,” Amnesty said in a statement Wednesday (May 12).

The call came as the Council of Europe’s committee of ministers prepared to adopt a treaty amending the European Convention on Human Rights at its session Wednesday and Thursday (May 12 and 13) in Strasbourg.

While Amnesty acknowledges that reform of the court is needed to respond to the “increasing number of individual applications which are being lodged with the court and the court’s current backlog” which the non-governmental organisation (NGO) says have “undermined its effectiveness,” it says the new admissibility criteria proposed is vague.

“Amnesty welcomes the fact that the reforms focus on ensuring better implementation of the European Convention at national level which, if implemented, would lead to fewer violations and the creation or improvement of redress mechanisms in member states,” it said.

Amnesty also welcomed stronger monitoring of the implementation of the court’s judgments by the Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, and the proposal to create a procedure to handle “manifestly well-founded” cases concerning violations of the European Convention.

But the NGO is concerned that some reforms could lead to “arbitrary decisions”, and could be applied differently in respect of different states and by different chambers of the court.

One of the most controversial reforms is a proposal to allow the court to declare “inadmissible” any application where the applicant “has not suffered a significant disadvantage”, subject to a deeper examination.

Amnesty says this proposal “would not address the two main sources of the current challenges facing the court – more efficient and effective screening of the applications and the expeditious rendering of judgments.”

The Council of Europe has been debating reforms to the European Court of Human Rights for the last three years.

The court says the reforms aim to guarantee its long-term effectiveness in light of the huge increase of applications it receives and the backlog of pending cases – some 96 percent of the applications are inadmissible under current criteria.

The court will be reformed under Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Amnesty is also concerned about the provision to include a judge on behalf of the respondent state.

“If that state has contested the application of the expedited procedure, it raises serious issues about the appearance of the independence of the court and has no place in a human rights treaty,” it said.

Amnesty says its opposition to the proposal to add new admissibility criteria is shared by some governments, judges and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This Assembly is one of two statutory organs of the Council of Europe, made up of the committee of ministers and an Assembly representing the political forces in its member states.

In April the Parliamentary Assembly acknowledged the necessity for changes to the European Court of Human Rights but said the proposal to add new admissibility criteria was “vague, subjective and liable to do the applicant a serious injustice.”

The Assembly proposed that the new criterion be replaced with one encouraging member states to share more of the burden of enforcing the Convention.