PACE welcomes interim plan to increase European Court’s capacity to process cases

Strasbourg, 30.04.2009 – A draft protocol which would increase the case-processing capacity of the European Court of Human Rights – pending the entry into force of more far-reaching measures to streamline the Court – was today welcomed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, following an urgent debate, as “a good interim solution”.

Protocol No. 14 bis to the European Convention on Human Rights would enable a single judge to deal with plainly inadmissible applications to the Court (presently handled by committees of three judges) and extend the competence of three-judge committees to handle clearly well-founded and repetitive cases deriving from systemic defects (presently handled by Chambers composed of seven judges).

These two measures alone could increase the case-processing capacity of the Court by 20 to 25 per cent, according to rapporteur Klaas de Vries (Netherlands, SOC).

The measures would apply only to cases from those States Parties which had agreed to them, and would become redundant once Protocol No. 14, a much wider package of urgent measures to streamline the Court, comes into force.

A declaration by High Contracting Parties to the Convention in Madrid on 12 May could allow some of these measures to be provisionally applied as soon as possible, the Assembly pointed out.

The Assembly also strongly deplored that the Russian State Duma had so far refused to give its assent to Protocol No. 14, blocking its entry into force. Pointing out that this had “considerably aggravated the situation in which the Court finds itself”, the parliamentarians urged the Duma to reconsider.

Text of draft Protocol No. 14 bis