The European Human Rights Convention:A New Court of Human Rights in Strasbourgas of November 1, 1998

I. Introduction Protocol No. 11 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), ratified by all Council of Europe member states - in other words, ratified by all of the forty contracting states parties to the ECHR (Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," Turkey, Ukraine and United Kingdom)-establishes a full-time, single court to replace the Convention's prior monitoring machinery. It entered into force on November 1,1998.1 This text, opened for signature on May 1 1994, is one of the concrete results of decisions taken by the Council of Europe's Heads of State and Government at their first summit meeting in Vienna on October 8-9, 1993. II. Main Aspects of the Reform A. The prior part-time monitoring institutions, namely the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, ceased to exist. A new European Court of Human Rights, operating full-time, was set up in Strasbourg, France. B. The system has been streamlined and, above all, all applicants now have direct access to the new court. Any cases that are clearly unfounded will be sifted out of the system at an early stage by a unanimous decision of the court sitting as a three-judge committee (the cases will therefore be declared inadmissible). In the large majority of cases, the court will sit as a seven-judge chamber. Only in exceptional cases will the court, sitting as a Grand Chamber of seventeen judges, decide on the most important issues. The President of the court and the presidents of chambers will always be able to sit in the Grand Chamber so as to ensure consistency and uniformity of the main caselaw. A judge elected in respect of the state party involved in a case will also sit in the Grand Chamber in order to ensure a proper understanding of the legal system under consideration. C. All allegations of violations of individuals' rights will be referred to the court. The Committee of Ministers (the Council of Europe's executive organ) will no longer have jurisdiction to decide on the merits of these cases. It will, however, retain its important role of monitoring the enforcement of the court's judgments. D. The right of individual application will be mandatory, and the court will have jurisdiction with respect to all inter-state cases. III Operation of the New Procedure as of November 1, 1998 As under the past system, individual applications and inter-state applications will exist side by side. As the secretariat of the Commission did in the past, the registry of the court will establish all necessary contacts with the applicants and, if necessary, request further information. Then, a chamber of the court will register the application, and the application will be assigned to a judge-rapporteur. The judge-rapporteur may refer the application to a three-judge committee, which may include the judgerapporteur. The committee may, by a unanimous decision, declare the application inadmissible; this decision will then be final. When the judge-rapporteur considers that the application raises a question of principle and is not inadmissible or when the committee is not unanimous in rejecting the complaint, a chamber will examine the application. (This procedure matches the prior system that was in force before the Commission.) A chamber, composed of seven judges, will decide on the merits of an application and, if necessary, its competence to adjudicate the case. The judge-rapporteur will prepare the casefile and establish contact with the parties. The parties will then submit their observations in writing. …