At a presentation of the 2016 report on the activities of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), its President, Judge Guido Raimondi, said that the number of incoming cases had increased considerably over the last 12 months, in particular in response to the abortive coup d'etat in Turkey.
From 64,850 requests pending at the end of 2015, the number now stands at 79,750, corresponding to an increase of 23%. This is particularly noteworthy as it comes after a sustained drop over several years, thanks to a reform of the ECHR.
This influx has its roots in the situation of three countries: Hungary and Romania, for matters relating to detention conditions, but also Turkey, particularly following the attempted coup d'etat 15 July 2016.
8,308 new Turkish applications have been registered, corresponding to an increase of 276% compared to 2015, President Raimondi said. 5,363 of these are related to the state of emergency decreed following the abortive putsch, 276 of which (relating to temporary detention) were declared inadmissible and two others - one submitted by a judge (see EUROPE 11671), the other by a teacher - were rejected as not all internal means of recourse had been exhausted.
These two decisions are extremely important, Raimondi stressed. They show that, even though Turkish citizens still have access to the ECHR - in spite of the fact that their country had activated article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights, allowing it to derogate from certain obligations - the principle of subsidiarity still needs to be applied fully.
On the point relating to internal means of recourse, President Raimondi welcomed new decrees promulgated by Turkey to set up a committee responsible for examining appeals against actions carried out in the framework of the state of emergency. He explained that the decisions of this committee would themselves be subject to appeals before the Administrative Court of Ankara and the Supreme Administrative Court of the Council of State. He added that the ECHR would be extremely prudent and follow the work of this committee very closely.
When asked about the decision of the Russian Constitutional Court not to pay shareholders of the Youkos Group the €1.9 billion in compensation provided for by the judgement returned by the ECHR in July 2014, President Raimondi said that this was based on an amendment of the Russian Constitutional Law adopted at the end of 2015 (see EUROPE 11708). He explained that the existence of a mechanism that could call the pre-eminence of our institution into question is an obvious source of concern, pointing out that monitoring the execution of the judgements is not the responsibility of the ECHR, but of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. He went on to say that relations with the Russian legal authorities are excellent and that 95% of the Court's judgements were correctly executed in the country.
Another point raised relates to the resumption of judicial dialogue between the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The discussions were broken off while the latter examined the possibility of the European Union acceding to the European Human Rights Convention, and taken back off ice in March of last year to support case-law convergence. This spirit remains valid, although accession looking less likely, concluded President Raimondi, who announced a further meeting to be held in Strasbourg, for which no date has as yet been set. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)