The awarding of just satisfaction and the supervision of the execution of the Court’s judgments in these matters is not always very clear to outside observers. A memorandum prepared by the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (DG-HL) of the Committee of Ministers sheds some light on this. It dates of January last year and is entitled ‘Monitoring of the payment of sums awarded by way of just satisfaction: an overview of the Committee of Ministers’ present practice’. This is the Department’s own introduction to the document:
In many cases, the relevant information for the payment of just satisfaction already appears in the Court’s judgment.
This information, however, is not always sufficient to resolve a number of – recurrent or one-off – questions as to arrangements for the payment of just satisfaction. This led to the wish that the Secretariat draw up a document recalling the practice followed in the framework of the monitoring of the payment of just satisfaction.
This document is therefore intended to present the practice followed to date on certain points by states and the Ministers’ Deputies – in the light of the solutions adopted by the Court – and to highlight the points deserving further clarification.
A helpful document, not only for the Council of Europe itself, but also for applicants and their lawyers. It helps to answer questions such as what happens if the applicant to whom satisfaction has been awarded is detained or has disappeared or is a legal entity that has been dissolved.
