issued by the Registrar of the Court
ECHR 027 (2013)
24.01.2013
President Spielmann highlights the Court’s very good results
in 2012
Speaking at the annual press conference of the European Court of Human Rights on
24 January 2013, President Spielmann looked back over 2012, which he described as an
exceptional year for the Court.
At the beginning of 2012 more than 150,000 applications had been pending before the
Court. By the end of the year, for the first time since the single full-time Court came into
operation in 1998, the stock of pending cases had been reduced, by some 16%. It now
stood at 128,000. This was a remarkable achievement, largely due to the adoption of
new working methods accompanying the optimum exploitation of the Single Judge
procedure introduced by Protocol No. 14. The overall number of applications disposed of
increased by 68%. This opened up the perspective of bringing the inflow and backlog of
inadmissible cases under control within two to three years.
Another very positive signal from 2012 was the report of the Council of Europe's External
Auditors, the French Cour des comptes, which endorsed the strategic choices made by
the Court.
Finally the High-level Conference held at Brighton provided an opportunity for the
member States of the Council of Europe to reaffirm their commitment to the human
rights protection system set up by the Convention and their recognition of the
importance of the Court's place in this system. Two new Protocols were now under
discussion in the Committee of Ministers and the reform process launched at the
Interlaken conference was being actively pursued. Once again Brighton stressed the
need for an effective implementation of Convention standards at national level and also
for full implementation of the Court's judgments.
conference. The table of violations by country showed that the State with the highest
number of judgments finding at least one violation of the Convention delivered against it
had been Russia (122 judgments), followed by Turkey (117), Romania (70), Ukraine
(69), Bulgaria (58), Poland (56) and Greece (52). In addition, at 31 December 2012 the
majority of pending cases were against Russia (22.3%), Turkey (13.2%), Italy (11.1%)
and Ukraine (8.2%).
This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court.
Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on
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