Published on Thursday 11 April, the 2023 report by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights shows increased commitment on the part of the Member States and civil society, but also identifies challenges linked in particular to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Committee of Ministers notes that this is seriously affecting Ukraine’s ability to implement the Court’s rulings.
“Due to its determination and close cooperation with the Council of Europe, Ukraine nevertheless managed to close 75 cases in 2023”, it points out.
Excluded from the Council of Europe in March 2022 and disengaged from the European Convention on Human Rights six months later, Russia is still obliged to comply with a series of judgments, 2,566 of which are still pending before the Committee of Ministers.
As these Russian cases remain at a standstill, the Committee of Ministers has adopted a specific strategy for dealing with them, involving in particular closer cooperation with the United Nations and civil society.
Another major challenge highlighted in the report is the continued detention of the Turkish political prisoner Osman Kavala despite the Court’s rulings and the Committee of Ministers’ repeated calls for his immediate release.
This case was dealt with at every meeting of the Human Rights Committee in 2023 and was the subject of four decisions, reports the Committee of Ministers, which is determined to “continue its work to ensure the commitment to the Convention system and the implementation of the Court’s judgments made by all states at the highest levels” during the Council of Europe Summit held in Reykjavik in May 2023.
This commitment has resulted in a record number of action plans submitted by Member States in 2023.
According to the report, the Committee of Ministers was able to close 982 cases last year. Out of these, 180 of them were “leading cases” requiring specific measures, often on a large scale, to prevent a recurrence of the same human rights violations.
At the end of December, the number of judgments awaiting execution was 3,819, of which 1,071 were “leading cases”.
The report contains country-by-country statistics.
Link to the 2023 report: https://aeur.eu/f/bq8 (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)