Europe reviews human rights

The European Court of Human Rights needs more money

By Diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason

Ministers from more than 40 European countries are meeting in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights.

At the meetings, on Friday and Saturday, they will discuss how to make the Convention more effective.

One particular issue is a demand for more resources for the European Court of Human Rights, which now handles five times as many cases as seven years ago.

Governments are also being asked to sign an additional protocol to the Convention banning discrimination on any grounds.

No budget growth

There were about 2,000 applications to the European Court of Human Rights in 1993. This year, there are expected to be more than 10,000.

Part of the increase is due to the central and east European countries which have signed up to the Convention in the past decade - the last was Russia in 1998.

But across the continent there is also a much greater public interest in human rights and awareness of how to remedy individual grievances against the authorities.

The Council is also under pressure from its parliamentarians to take strong measures against member states who refuse or fail to carry out the rulings of the Human Rights Court.

The president of the Court, Luzius Wildhaber, says the constantly rising case load means that it cannot remain effective and credible with zero growth in its budget.

It is intolerable, he says, that the European Court is having difficulty maintaining the standards that it asks domestic courts to observe, especially in dealing with cases in a reasonable time.

The Council of Europe, which is organising the Rome conference, says it expects a statement of political intent to boost the Court's resources, but it is unclear how specific this will be.

Rulings ignored

The Council is also under pressure from its parliamentarians to take strong measures against member states who refuse or fail to carry out the rulings of the Human Rights Court.

The most blatant cases include one where Turkey has refused to compensate a Greek Cypriot woman who lost her property in northern Cyprus as a result of the Turkish invasion of 1974.

Another is that of a man, Abdelhamid Hakkar, sentenced to life imprisonment in France in 1989 at a trial where he was not present or legally represented.

Without mentioning France by name, Mr Wildhaber said that the refusal of an old established democracy to abide by a judgment set an appalling example to newer states joining the Convention.

New protocol

A new protocol to the Convention prohibits discrimination on any grounds - including sex, race, language, politics and religion.

Council of Europe officials said they hoped for about 20 signatures.

The UK will not be one of them, but British officials were not immediately able to explain why.