Ukraine will be at the heart of the Council of Europe Summit on 16-17 May in Reykjavik, Iceland. More than 40 heads of state and government will confirm their unity in the face of Russia’s armed aggression and reaffirm their commitment to the values that are at the heart of the Strasbourg-based organisation: human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The European Court of Human Rights will be among the topics discussed, with “vital” issues on the agenda, judge Frédéric Krenc, who has been representing Belgium in the Court since 2021, told EUROPE. (Interview by Véronique Leblanc)
Agence Europe: The Memorandum in preparation for the Summit, adopted by the Court in plenary, emphasises the issue of its financing. What exactly is the situation?
Judge Frédéric Krenc: The Court deals with a huge volume of applications, and we currently have 75,000 cases pending.
To cope with this, we have 46 judges (one per Council of Europe Member State) and about 640 members of the Registry, with a budget of €75 million.
By comparison, the Court of Justice of the European Union has a budget of €487 million for the year 2023. Between six and seven times more...
The funding of the Court, which depends on contributions from States, is vital. This issue will have to be discussed in Reykjavik.
As well as the execution of its judgments?
Another crucial point.
No matter how beautiful a judgment is, it is useless if it is not executed! Its pronouncement is only the beginning of a process. Only its implementation will make effective the fundamental right(s) found to have been violated.
This poses a problem for some States, notably Turkey in the Kavala case, whose release the Court is calling for. Are other States involved?
As far as I am concerned, I refuse to caricature and point at certain countries.
Beyond the notorious cases, the problem concerns all Member States, even though the majority of judgments are executed, albeit sometimes with delay.
Today, 80% of the cases pending before the Court concern repetitive applications for which it already has case law and which would not arise if States had adequately learned from previous judgments.
What is the status of the European Union’s accession process to the European Convention on Human Rights?
This is an old project dating back to the late 1970s.
The Lisbon Treaty (2009) made this membership mandatory. In 2014, however, the Court of Justice of the European Union objected to an earlier text.
The process has been relaunched since 2019 and negotiations are said to have progressed well.
A draft agreement was reached in April, with the exception of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, which remains open.
Such an accession would send a strong message.
The European Union and the Council of Europe would therefore acknowledge that the whole of Europe shares the same heritage of values, and we would stop opposing the Union of merchants and the Europe of fundamental rights.
Synergy and complementarity could, I am sure, develop between the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.
We are already working on this.
Accession certainly implies technical adjustments (the EU is not a State), but I am convinced that it can be achieved with a common goodwill. I am optimistic.
In her 2023 State of Democracy Report, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe writes: “Europe must not return to the wilderness”. Is this where we are?
I would say that we had a golden age of human rights between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks of 11 September 2001.
Then a period of retrenchment set in, amplified by terrorist threats, the economic crisis and the pandemic, which led to the proliferation of ‘states of exception’.
The crisis we are experiencing today is protean and is taking hold in a daily life marked by a normalisation of the exception and a perpetuation of the emergency.
It is in times of crisis that the Convention takes on its full meaning. It was made for such critical situations, not for peaceful and golden ones.
For its part, the Court must resist.
Despite the challenges that are being raised, for example, in Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom?
Absolutely. It must carry out its mission without fear of being disliked or, conversely, without being won over by a kind of intoxication of power.
The Court is not there to dictate a world view from its ivory tower. It does not get involved in politics or morals. It does not have the legitimacy to do so.
It is there to remind states of their promises, not in a spirit of confrontation, but of dialogue.
That is why it will be essential that in Reykjavik, they solemnly reaffirm their commitment to the Convention, its values and the Court.