17/11/2010 News
Unanimously adopting its 7th report on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights today during a meeting in Paris, PACE Legal Affairs Committee has urged nine countries where major structural problems have led to many repeat violations – Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine – to take swift action. “Our Assembly, as well as national parliaments, must now play a much more pro-active role in helping the Committee of Ministers and member states to supervise the execution of the Strasbourg Court’s judgments,” said the rapporteur Christos Pourgourides (Cyprus, EPP/CD). “If this is not done, the key role of the Convention and its supervisory mechanisms in guaranteeing the effective protection of human rights in Europe will be put in jeopardy.”
According to the committee, the main problems continue to be the excessive length of judicial proceedings (endemic notably in Italy), chronic non-enforcement of domestic judicial decisions (widespread, in particular, in Russia and Ukraine), deaths and ill-treatment by law enforcement officials and lack of effective investigations into them (particularly apparent in Russia and Moldova) and unlawful or over-long detention on remand (a problem notably in Moldova, Poland, Russia and Ukraine).
The committee considers that these problems are a matter for grave concern, seriously undermining the rule of law in the states concerned, and makes a series of recommendations to each state concerned. The committee also urges those national parliaments which have not yet done so to introduce specific mechanisms and procedures for effective parliamentary oversight of the implementation of Court judgments.
The report will be discussed during the forthcoming winter Parliamentary Assembly Session (24-28 January 2011).