The President of the European Court of Human Rights, Síofra O’Leary, presented the Court’s 2022 review at a press conference on Thursday 26 January, prefacing it with the “extremely serious events for Europe” that have marked the past year.
“The invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe and the cessation of its status as a High Contracting Party to the Convention, have had considerable legal repercussions for the Court”, the President said.
When asked about this, she noted Russia’s exclusion from the Council of Europe on 16 March 2022, followed by the Court’s confirmation of its jurisdiction over Russian cases concerning acts committed before 16 September 2022, when Russia ceased to be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights.
At present, 16,700 applications are still pending, even though the Russian judge has not been sitting since 16 September and Russia has not been cooperating with the Court since 16 March, said Síofra O’Leary.
“We looked for guidelines for handling these cases”, she continued, “and we decided in each case to choose an ad hoc judge from among those sitting on the Court” [one for each of the 46 Council of Europe member states, ed.].
With regard to Moscow’s lack of cooperation, she clarified that the Convention and the Court’s Rules of Procedure stipulate that the fact that a State does not cooperate with the Court does not mean that the Court should cease to deal with cases concerning it.
As for the application of the judgments rendered, she admitted a concern, but highlighted that the duty of a judge is to “do his or her job”, in this case “to apply the Convention”, and “to render binding judgments, even if the respondent State is no longer a party to the Convention”.
“I can say, as a judge, that these judgements are of great value”, she concluded.
She also quoted key figures from the report: 74% of the 74,650 pending cases - a figure that is increasing - concern 5 countries: Turkey (which has become the largest provider of cases since the 2016 coup attempt), the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Romania and Italy.
She also referred to interstate cases, which are among the most resource-intensive requests. They will be dealt with as a matter of priority and concern conflicts between two states: Russia/Ukraine, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Georgia/Russia.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/53t (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)