Last year in May, the University of Fribourg organised a conference on the European Court’s future after Protocol 14. The conference book, edited by Samantha Besson, is out now and is entitled ‘La Cour européenne des droits de l’homme après le Protocole 14 / The European Court of Human Rights after Protocol 14’. It includes contributions by Luzius Wildhaber, Helen Keller, Philip Leach, Elisabeth Lambert Abdelgawad and many others. This is the abstract:
After many years of uncertainty, Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights finally entered into force on 1st June, 2010. It brings about some important and well-known amendments to the European Court of Human Rights’ functioning. Those reforms should help the Court deal with some of the serious difficulties and backlog it has been facing to date. The Protocol also generates its own set of new difficulties, however, as many procedural and substantive issues were not settled by the updated version of the Rules of court and will have to be addressed in practice.
Moreover, as foreseen by certain specialists, many other fundamental reforms are needed to make the Court more effective and a Protocol 15 is allegedly already under consideration. The present publication has two aims. It aims, first of all, at developing a general assessment of the main improvements to the Court’s functioning one year after the entry into force of the Protocol, but also at identifying some issues where further reforms are needed. A second aim is to examine the Declaration and Action Plan that was adopted on 19th February, 2010 at the Interlaken Conference on the Future of the European Court of Human Rights and under the Swiss Chairmanship of the Council of Europe. Different measures listed in the Action Plan are discussed and suggestions made as to how to best implement them.
