Turkey is wielding the scepter of human rights violations for 2008 among the 47 member-states of the Council of Europe, with 257 convictions against it, followed by Russia with 233 convictions, Romania with 189, Poland with 129 and Ukraine with 110.
These figures were presented on Thursday by the President of the European Court of Human Rights, Jean-Paul Costa at a press conference held in Strasbourg on the occasion of the Court’s 50th anniversary since its establishment.
He called upon the member states of the Council of Europe to reaffirm their commitment to human rights and their support for the Court’s work, while at the same time reflecting with the Court on how to adapt the protection mechanism to the needs of the 21st century.
He stressed the size of the current caseload (nearly 100,000 cases pending), which is constantly increasing, and noted that, regrettably, the various reform proposals had reached an apparent impasse, even if he remained hopeful that the different obstacles could be surmounted.
At the same time, he added, the Court could not simply go on increasing its staff and resources indefinitely, although it would still be necessary to provide the Court with additional means in the short to medium term.
Costa said that something had to be done to safeguard the long-term effectiveness of the system.
The main lines of the reform were clear: comprehensive implementation of the Convention standards at domestic level; effective execution of the Court's judgments by member states to ensure that the Court was not overloaded with large numbers of similar cases and a re-structured protection mechanism allowing the Court's efforts to be concentrated as a matter of priority on the important well-founded cases.
The President stated that the Court had delivered 1,543 judgments in 2008, 3% up on 2007, and 30,163 decisions, 11% up.
He explained that this considerable activity had not reduced the backlog, as some 50,000 new applications had been allocated to a judicial formation in 2008, 20% more than in 2007.
He also pointed out that 57% of applications had been lodged against just four states (the Russian Federation, Turkey, Romania and Ukraine), with the remaining 43% covering the other 43 member states.
While this high caseload showed the confidence that the European public placed in the Court, it carried with it a risk of saturation, he mentioned.
He concluded by saying that the Court had to work together with the Council of Europe and national authorities on improving the information available to the public with a view to getting across to them a clearer message about what the Convention and therefore the Court could do for them and what fell outside their reach.
Also at this press conference, the Court's annual table of violations per country was published for 2008 which it shows that Turkey was the country that gave rise to the greatest number of judgments (257) in which at least one violation of the Convention was found, followed by Russia (233), Romania (189), Poland (129) and Ukraine (110).
The Court has found Turkey guilty of human rights violations in Cyprus on several cases, as a result of its 1974 invasion of the island’s northern part and its continuing occupation.
