Reservations as Clarke wins Strasbourg court reform deal
Forty-seven European states have adopted the final draft of the UK government’s proposed reforms of the Strasbourg human rights court, despite reservations expressed by some of the court’s top officials.
These reservations include fears that national parliaments might attempt to compromise the independence of the court and that the reforms are simply ‘tinkering at the edges’ of the court’s procedures.
Justice minister Kenneth Clarke, announcing the adoption of the Brighton Declaration on reforming the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), said: ‘These reforms represent a substantial package of reform and are a significant step towards realising the goals that the prime minister set out in Strasbourg (in January 2012). Taken together, these changes should mean fewer cases being considered by the court… and without the scandalous delays we are seeing at present.’
However, ECtHR president Sir Nicholas Bratza, a British lawyer, said that at a time that human rights and the court were being held responsible for much of what is wrong in society, the ‘court must be independent and be seen to be independent’. He said: ‘That is why the court gets uncomfortable when member states try to dictate to it.’
He added that the government’s new admissibility criteria merely added to the court’s existing ‘arsenal’ of such criteria.
Jean-Claude Mignon, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE), said that although he accepted that it was incumbent upon member states to apply ECtHR principles, ‘the court should always have the last word’.
CoE secretary-general Thorbjorn Jagland said: ‘The world has moved on from nationalism to internationalism, where we must all protect human rights by law. While it is important to improve national implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights, we must not seem to be weakening the importance of the court.’
Professor Philip Leach, one of the authors of a ECtHR report commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the government’s proposals merely ‘tinkered at the edges’ of the court’s procedures.
The Brighton Declaration marks the culmination of the UK’s six-month chairmanship of the CoE, which ends next month. Albania is set to assume the chair next and then Andorra.
Comments
The ECHR is not a court, it
The ECHR is not a court, it is a political body staffed by political appointees. The pronouncements it makes should be treated as precisely that-pronouncements by a political body. They are not judgements in any meaningful use of the term.
BRIGHTON CONFERENCE
As long as there is a general belief in separation of powers, even if the practice is largely ignored in a number of the 47 European states which agreed to sign up to the Brighton Declaration, it is vital that the ECHR does not lose its ability to decide cases independently of government.
There are enormous delays in processing cases which have increased considerably since the human rights court was set up in the post war period.However the Court still has to deal with egregious violations of the Convention mainly by countries such as Russia and Turkey whose citizens are perennially let down by domestic legal systems that are inimical to the very concept of human rights.If there was less torture and denial of basic freedoms in the Balkans and beyond much of the case backlog would never have materialised in the first place.
Over six decades have passed since the Court was founded yet it seems that for many Europeans any expectation of decent treatment by their own political leaders remains but a distant possibility Hence, this week's conference is unlikely to reduce the number of applicants seeking belated redress from the only judicial body that can provide an effective venue for the hearing of their grievances.