Brussels, 30/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - During a meeting in Brussels of justice ministers from the Council of Europe on 26-27 March, the 47 member states of the Council of Europe reasserted their support for the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and approved a series of measures to improve the implementation of judgments from the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.
The government representatives adopted the Brussels Declaration together with an accompanying action plan. The declaration welcomes the result of the ECHR reform process and the very strong fall in the number of cases pending before the court. The declaration adds, however, that additional measures “are now needed to deal with challenges including repetitive applications resulting from the non-execution of judgments”. In 2014, a record number of cases were closed by the committee of ministers and a fall in the number of pending cases followed - with a 20% decrease in pending cases compared with the previous five years. In 2014, there were 1,389 new cases submitted to the committee of ministers and 1,502 cases were closed. The Council of Europe notes that the number of cases with decisions still to be implemented was 10,904 in 2014, including 9,391 of a repetitive nature. The countries with the highest number of decisions still to be implemented are Italy (2,622 cases), Turkey (1,500 cases), Russia (1,474 cases), Ukraine (1,009 cases) and Romania (639 cases). (Solenn Paulic)