The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Monitoring on the Implementation of the European Court of Human Rights Judgments

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is the most important international treaty to protect fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms at European level. The Convention was adopted on November 4, 1950 in Rome by the governments of the member states at that time of the Council of Europe. Currently all 47 members of the Council of Europe, international European organization founded in 1949 in Strasbourg, France, are party to the Convention. The implementation of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments is supervised by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers (CM), according to article 46 para 2 of the ECHR. Beyond the primary responsibility of the CM in this field, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) increased significantly its contribution to this process during the past 10-15 years. Its 10th report on the implementation of ECtHR judgments focuses on a number of member states and cases pending before the CM still to be implemented, that reveals structural problems, complex and difficult issues related for instance to inter-State cases or individual cases displaying inter-State features reflecting particular difficulties for the execution process, sometimes for already more than 10 years after the Court’s judgments. The PACE report addresses therefore a number of specific requests and recommendations to the member states and the CM for supporting an accelerated process for the full implementation of these judgments.