Strasbourg, 28.04.2004 - The Parliamentary Assembly today acknowledged the necessity for changes to the European Court of Human Rights to enable it to cope with a huge increase in its workload - but said a proposal to add a new admissibility criterion for individual applications was "vague, subjective and liable to do the applicant a serious injustice" while excluding only 1.6 per cent of existing cases.
The Assembly proposed that the new criterion - which would allow the Court to declare inadmissible any application where the applicant "has not suffered a significant disadvantage", subject to a deeper examination - be replaced with one encouraging member states to share more of the burden of enforcing the Convention.
Adopting an opinion on Draft Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, prepared by Kevin McNamara (United Kingdom, SOC) on behalf of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the parliamentarians also questioned a proposal to allow the appointment of additional judges in respect of one or more Contracting States, which they said could "create inequalities between countries".
Recommending a list of seven "essential" amendments, the Assembly again proposed that the three-person list of candidates for judge at the Court presented by the governments of contracting states should contain candidates of both sexes, and said the new protocol should give the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights the possibility to bring alleged mass violations of human rights before the Court.
However, the Assembly wholeheartedly backed the proposal for a non-renewable nine-year term for judges at the Court - which it had originally suggested - on the grounds that it would enhance their independence and impartiality.
Legal experts have been preparing the protocol for the last year, after a period of reflection dating from 2000, to enable the Court to cope with an annual increase in cases of 25 to 35 per cent. The Committee of Ministers, the decision-making body of the Council of Europe, has indicated it would
like to adopt the protocol by May of this year. It is obliged to consult the Assembly on any new treaties.
For more information, please visit http://assembly.coe.int