Raad van Europa doet aanbevelingen voor betere procedures bij Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens (en)

The European Court of Human Rights is today making available on its website (www.echr.coe.int) in English and French a report reviewing the Court's working methods by Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.

The review, which was drawn up with the assistance of a small group of experts, seeks to identify administrative measures which could help the Court deal with its ever-growing workload; 44,100 new applications were lodged in 2004 and the number of cases currently pending before the Court stands at 82,100.

Lord Woolf is also a member of the Group of Wise Persons established by the Council of Europe's Third Summit in Warsaw in May 2005. This Group has been tasked with drawing up a comprehensive strategy to secure the long term effectiveness of the European Convention on Human Rights and its control mechanism.

The review recommends among other things that:

The Court deal only with properly completed application forms;

Satellite offices be established in key countries producing high numbers of inadmissible applications;

Greater use be made of national ombudsmen and other methods of alternative dispute resolution be encouraged;

The Court deliver more pilot judgments and then deal summarily with repetitive cases.

Welcoming the report, the President of the Court, Luzius Wildhaber, announced that he would refer the proposals to the Court's Working Methods Committee. He said that they provided the Court with substantial food for thought and that they would also be helpful to the Wise Persons' process.

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Further information about the Court can be found on its Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).

Registry of the European Court of Human Rights

F - 67075 Strasbourg Cedex

Press contacts: Roderick Liddell (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 24 92)

Emma Hellyer (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15)

Stéphanie Klein (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54)

Beverley Jacobs (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 21)

Fax: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 27 91

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. Since 1 November 1998 it has sat as a full-time Court composed of an equal number of judges to that of the States party to the Convention. The Court examines the admissibility and merits of applications submitted to it. It sits in Chambers of 7 judges or, in exceptional cases, as a Grand Chamber of 17 judges. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe supervises the execution of the Court's judgments.