10/12/2014 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
A PACE committee has congratulated the European Court of Human Rights on reducing its backlog of cases and becoming more efficient, but urged states to match this progress by “reinforcing the principle of subsidiarity” and upholding European Convention standards better at national level.
In a draft resolution based on a report by Yves Pozzo di Borgo (France, EPP/CD), PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee warned that repeated applications on the same issue and ongoing serious underlying structural human rights problems in some states were still adding to the challenges facing the Court.
States had recognised their “shared responsibility”, along with the Court, to implement the European Convention effectively, but some were failing to fulfil their Convention obligations, the committee pointed out.
Hailing the Court for its “extraordinary contribution” to the protection of human rights in Europe for half a century, the parliamentarians said it was “the most advanced regional human rights protection mechanism in the world”.
But it could not be solely responsible for enforcing human rights standards across Europe. They urged national parliaments, in particular, to use their potential to oversee Convention standards by screening new laws for human rights compatibility and by pressing governments to abide by the Court’s rulings.