Annual Report 2013
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European Court of Human Rights Annual Report 2013 Registry of the European Court of Human Rights Strasbourg, 2014 All or part of this document may be freely reproduced with acknowledgment of the source “Annual Report 2013 of the European Court of Human Rights, Council of Europe”. Photographs: Council of Europe Cover: the Human Rights Building (Architects: Richard Rogers Partnership and Atelier Claude Bucher) ISBN: 978-92-871-9935-5 Printed in France, March 2014 VALBLOR Illkirch 12021555 CONTENTS Foreword 5 I. The Court in 2013 7 II. Composition of the Court 15 III. Composition of the Sections 19 IV. Speech given by Mr Dean Spielmann, President of the European Court of Human Rights, on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year, 25 January 2013 23 V. Speech given by Ms Christiane Taubira, Garde des Sceaux, French Minister of Justice, on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year, 25 January 2013 31 VI. Speech given by Mr Theodor Meron, President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, President of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year, 25 January 2013 39 VII. President’s Diary 49 VIII. Activities of the Grand Chamber, Sections and single- judge formations 59 IX. Case-law information, training and outreach 63 X. Summary of the main judgments and decisions delivered by the Court in 2013 77 XI. Cases reported in the Court’s Case-law Information Notes in 2013 145 XII. Statistical information 189 Events in total (2012-2013) 191 Pending cases allocated to a judicial formation at 31 December 2013 (respondent States) 192 Pending cases allocated to a judicial formation at 31 December 2013 (main respondent States) 193 Court’s workload by state of proceedings and application type at 31 December 2013 194 Violations by subject matter at 31 December 2013 195 European Court of Human Rights – Annual Report 2013 Applications allocated to a judicial formation (2000-2013) 196 Judgments (2000-2013) 197 Allocated applications by State and by population (2010- 2013) 198 Violations by Article and by respondent State (2013) 200 Violations by Article and by respondent State (1959-2013) 202 4 FOREWORD In 2010, 2011 and 2012, during the respective Swiss, Turkish and British Chairmanships of the Council of Europe, three high-level conferences on the Court’s future were held with the aim of finding ways to guarantee the efficiency of the Convention system. 2013 is thus the first year, since 2009, in which no such conference has taken place. It has certainly not been unhelpful to have such a break, giving the Court time to implement the decisions adopted at Interlaken, İzmir and Brighton, which have also been followed up by the member States. In this connection, the most significant aspect, in my opinion, has been the introduction of reforms at the domestic level. Various examples are worthy of mention. For instance, in its Ümmühan Kaplan judgment of 20 March 2012, the Court invited Turkey to put in place, in its domestic legal order, an effective remedy by which to obtain appropriate and sufficient redress where criminal proceedings were not conducted within a reasonable time. On 19 January 2013 a law creating a Compensation Commission came into force in Turkey and this has been regarded by the Court as affording an effective remedy to be used in respect of such a complaint. Moreover, since 23 September 2012 a general remedy for human rights violations has been introduced before the Turkish Constitutional Court. The Court has already declared an application inadmissible for non-exhaustion in the light of this new remedy. In the case of Ruminski v. Sweden, which gave rise to a decision of 21 May 2013, we considered that, since an effective remedy had been created by domestic case-law that was capable of affording redress in respect of alleged violations of the Convention, the fact that the applicant had not sought compensation from the Swedish courts, on the basis of that remedy, rendered the application inadmissible. One last example: following the adoption of two pilot judgments against Bulgaria, two new compensatory remedies were introduced. The Court had occasion to analyse the new procedures and their effectiveness and regarded them as effective domestic remedies that the applicants were required to exhaust. What lessons can be learned from these examples? Quite simply that, where States create remedies at national level, they are upholding the concept of shared responsibility: provided, of course, that the remedies thus created are effective and, in that connection, it is obvious that the Court fully retains its supervisory role. Generally speaking, we rely greatly on the introduction of effective domestic remedies in order to alleviate the Court’s role. In 2013 the ongoing process of reform of the system was pursued and led to the adoption of Protocols Nos. 15 and 16 to the Convention, opened for signature in June and October respectively. The adoption of two new Protocols in the same year is noteworthy in itself. European Court of Human Rights – Annual Report 2013 One of the major events of the year is certainly the fact that we at last have a draft agreement for the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights. Adopted on 5 April 2013, it is the result of almost three years of negotiations between the forty-seven member States of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. This is an outstanding accomplishment which should be highly commended. There will obviously be many other stages to go through before it comes into force. Nevertheless, the adoption of this draft agreement is a very significant step on the path towards the European Union’s accession. Accession will enable citizens to refer acts of the European Union institutions – the importance of which for our day- to-day life can no longer be in doubt – for the same external review as that which is already carried out by the European Court of Human Rights in respect of the acts of State institutions. This external supervision will, in my view, bring real added value in relation to the purely internal supervision within the European Union. This report contains, as it does every year, statistical data on the Court’s activity over the past year. The figures are impressive and attest to the intensive activity of our institution: we have delivered over 900 judgments and over 1,100 decisions. In addition, single judges have declared inadmissible or have struck out some 80,500 applications. The number of pending applications, which stood at 128,000 at the end of 2012, had been reduced to just under 100,000 by the end of 2013. As I had occasion to observe in my speech for the opening of the judicial year: the Court is no longer a victim of its own success. I am happy to be able to repeat that observation now that the year has come to an end. Dean Spielmann President of the European Court of Human Rights 6 I. THE COURT IN 2013 THE COURT IN 2013 The European Convention on Human Rights passed another milestone in 2013, marking sixty years since it took effect. Ten ratifications were required in order to bring the Convention into force. It was Luxembourg’s ratification on 3 September 1953 that allowed the Convention to take effect that same day. President Spielmann marked the occasion by issuing the following statement: “Those who deposited the instrument of ratification believed that the Convention would form the bedrock of democratic Europe, an enterprise for peace and freedom. They considered it a great honour for Luxembourg to make possible the entry into force of what they described as ‘the finest European undertaking to date’. Sixty years on, we strive every day to continue on the course they charted for us.” Surveying the year 2013 at the Court, two main themes can be discerned. The first is the continuing growth in judicial activity. The Court managed once again to increase its throughput of cases by a significant degree, attaining an unprecedented level of productivity.1 These results attest to the value of the reforms introduced by Protocol No. 14, now in their fourth year of operation. They attest too to the determination of the Court to utilise them fully, and to modernise its case-processing and administrative procedures. The remarkable impact of the reforms is also due to the willingness of States to accept these innovations, which entail certain abridgments of their procedural rights when it comes to repetitive cases. States have been active at national level, in keeping with their undertakings at the Interlaken, İzmir and Brighton Conferences, to improve implementation of the Convention, particularly by improving domestic remedies. One example of this in 2013 was the creation of a new Compensation Commission in Turkey to afford redress to persons affected by excessive delay in domestic judicial proceedings. This new remedy, which was Turkey’s response to the Ümmühan Kaplan pilot judgment2, enabled the Court to redirect over 2,500 pending applications back to the domestic level3. Overall, the number of applications pending before the Court decreased by approximately 28,000 bringing the total at the end of the year 2013 to just under the 100,000 mark. The improvement is all the more striking when regard is had to the situation in 2011, when the number of pending applications peaked at just over 160,000. In the space of two years, and with no fall-off in the number of new applications, the Court’s docket has been cut by more than a third.