As of 21
April 2021, all Contracting Parties to the ECHR have ratified Protocol 15. It
will enter into force on 1 August 2021. The Protocol was adopted in 2013,
so it took eight years for all States to ratify it. Italy was the
last State to complete the ratification process of the new protocol.
Protocol 15
introduces important changes to the Convention system. These changes, in brief
– add a reference to the
principle of subsidiarity and the doctrine of the margin of appreciation
to
the Preamble of the Convention;
– shorten from six to
four months the time limit within which an application must be made to the
Court;
– amend the ‘significant
disadvantage’ admissibility criterion to remove the second safeguard preventing
rejection of an application that has not been duly considered by a domestic
tribunal;
– remove the right of the parties to a case to object to
relinquishment of jurisdiction over it by a Chamber in favour of the Grand
Chamber; and
– replace the upper age limit for judges by a requirement
that candidates for the post of judge be less than 65 years of age at the date
by which the list of candidates has been requested by the Parliamentary
Assembly.
The Explanatory
Report and the Opinion of the Court on Protocol 15 can be found here
and here.
Protocol 15
is seen as part of the reform of the Court. Reform,
however, means changing things for good. A question remains who benefits from these
changes. While the Court’s efficacy may be enhanced through the new institutional and procedural changes brought by the new protocol, and
States may feel more ensured with the new reference to subsidiarity and margin
of appreciation, one may argue that victims of human rights violations are the least direct beneficiaries of
this change taking into account that, among others, it further limits their
time to lodge a complaint before the Court.
