Brussels, 12/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) saw a reduction in so-called repetitive cases and closed more files, but its workload nonetheless continues to grow. These conclusions were published on Wednesday 10 April in the 2012 annual report on the ECHR's execution of rulings and decisions.
According to the report, although it regularly questions belonging to the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Kingdom is one of the best-behaved countries - with only 39 cases pending concerning it, as opposed to 1,211 for Russia and 2,569 for Italy, a Council of Europe source states. The United Kingdom was also ordered to pay less “fair compensation” money in 2012 than other countries, like France for example - in this case, less than €0.5 million as opposed to €7 million for France and Russia, €23 million for Turkey and €119 million for Italy, the same source points out.
In general terms, the report notes that the ECHR now counts 11,099 cases pending (only 997 in 1997 by way of comparison), and this is despite a slowdown in backlog cases, which were up by only 4% in 2012, the ECHR states. The ECHR saw a reduction of 10% in new cases in comparison with 2011 (1,438 new cases) and closed more files - in other words, it closed 1,035 files in 2012, 27% more than in 2011.
Among the observations for 2012, the report states that the main problems are the persistence of “repetitive” cases which translate from structural weaknesses in the member states, so-called repetitive affairs corresponding to “identical affairs drawing their origin from the same underlying problem”, the ECHR explains.
The slowness of judicial procedures, the action of security forces, and prison detention conditions are the main areas of upset emerging from the ECHR's work in 2012. (SP/transl.fl)