By Brendan Sweeney
The Duma (Russian Parliament) has ratified Protocol 14 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR), which paves the way for a much needed overhaul of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
On Thursday, 14 January 2010, Boris Gryzlov, State Duma House Speaker, announced that the lower house of the Russian parliament would vote for the protocol after the EU Council of Ministers came to agreement over Russia’s original reservations against the document.
Russia is the last of the 47 Council of Europe member-states to ratify Protocol 14, which is designed to overhaul the procedures of the Strasbourg court. Russian parliamentarians had objected to a number of issues, including a lack of collective leadership regarding case reviews. They also insisted that the “troika of judges” handling each case should include a representative of the country whose case is under review.
Currently more than 100,000 grievances, including approximately 25,000 cases relating to Russia, are being processed in the European Court of Human Rights.
“The Protocol has been on the table since 2006 but it couldn’t come into force until now, because Russia refused to sign and ratify it. Now that the Russian parliament, the Duma, has decided to sign the Protocol the Council of Europe can start the long-awaited streamlining process," explained DIHR Senior Researcher, Stéphanie Lagoutte.
“Much of Protocol 14 has already been implemented by most of the Council of Europe member states, because last year they adopted an interim protocol. But now that Russia has ratified the new protocol, the faster and more simple procedures outlined in the Protocol can be applied to all cases,” she continued.
Protocol 14 will however not solve all the Court’s problems, stressed Stéphanie Lagoutte. This is because the length of time taken by the ECHR to process cases is not the only reason for the huge backlog.
“The Court’s main problems have come about because of inadequate implementation of the Convention in several Council of Europe member countries. This means that there are simply too many cases coming before the ECHR. In 2009, for instance, 50,000 cases were brought to court,” said Stéphanie Lagoutte.
Many experts believe that the ECHR has become a victim of its own success, especially in the wake of the process of enlargement after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The accession of Russia, Ukraine and Romania to the Council of Europe in the 1990s precipitated a flood of new cases and these states now account for around 45 per cent of all pending applications.
Council Secretary-General, Thorbjorn Jagland, said that the decision was crucial for "the modernization of Russia's judicial system...Today's approval of the ratification will clearly help the reform process. By joining the other 46 member states, Russia is sending a strong signal of its commitment to Europe."
The President of the European Court of Human Rights, Jean-Paul Costa, welcomed the decision and expressed satisfaction that Protocol 14 would be able to take effect in all member states.
In particular, new procedures, such as the single-judge procedure and the new powers of the three-judge committees, which have already been applied in a large number of member states following the Council of Europe ministerial session in Madrid on 12 May 2009 will now be implemented in all states.
Although the new procedures will not resolve all the problems resulting from the flood of applications to the Court, they will help it to operate more efficiently. It will also be possible to apply the remaining provisions of Protocol No. 14.
The timing of the Russian decision is particularly welcome as an important ministerial conference to further the process of reforming the Court is being organised by Switzerland in Interlaken on 18 and 19 February.
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