Last November, a big conference was held at Wilton Park in the United Kingdom. It was an international informal discussion meeting between national judges and parliamentarians, state representatives, Council of Europe and Court offocials and civil society experts on discussing the future of the European Court of Human Rights. The report of the meeting is entitled ‘2020 Vision for the European Court of Human Rights’. According to the organisers, key issues discussed included the following:
* Challenges currently facing the Convention system, including the Court’s workload and the backlog of pending applications, systemic violations and the role of the Court, the resources available to the Court, the relationship of the Court to national parliaments and national legal systems, public perceptions of the Court and the need for greater political will on the part of governments to secure the rights and freedoms of the Convention;
* Ways of addressing the present and likely future demands made on the Court, including building on the reforms introduced in recent years, strengthening national implementation of the Convention, in particular the execution of judgments, and how best to drive forward the urgent need for reform, reaching a balance between incoming cases and judgments, on a manageable level, and lower than that of today, in a reasonable time without weakening the human rights protection the Convention affords.
