The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has just published a new report on the Effective implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights: the Interlaken process (drafted by Mrs Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc, The Netherlands, Group of the European People’s Party). The report’s summary reads as follows:
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights welcomes the declaration and action plan which emerged from February’s high-level conference on the future of the European Court of Human Rights in Interlaken, especially its recognition of the basic principle that human rights must be guaranteed first and foremost at national level. Convention rights need to be better implemented nationally, states with major structural problems which give rise to repeated breaches of the Convention must deal with these more effectively, and Court judgments should be swiftly and fully executed. For their part, parliaments can play a key role in stemming the flood of applications by, for example, scrutinising draft laws to make sure they are compatible with Convention standards and keeping up the pressure on governments to execute Court judgments. Lastly, the committee welcomes the changes introduced by the entry into force in June 2010 of Protocol No. 14 to the Convention, and spells out when the new nine-year term of office for judges will begin.
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