Tuesday, 3 March 2020

Great New Resource on Implementation of Judgments

The European Implementation Network (EIN) has added a great new resource to its website. The overview reflects how well or how badly all ECHR state parties are implementing the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Its most attractive and easily readable feature is an interactive map which allows the visitor of the website to look up any state party and to which percentage of the leading judgments (the measure used: new significant or systemic problems in a country) has been implemented by that country (measured by the consideration being closed by the Committee of Ministers). This thus concerns the most important judgments. The period assessed is the last decade. It shows an average implementation rate for this category of judgments of 43%. Around 1200 leading judgments are pending. These numbers reflect the impression that implementation remains an Achilles' heel in the ECHR system. The states with the highest percentages of pending judgments are Azerbaijan (95%), Russia (89%) and Hungary (74%) which reflects the studies and comments of academic and civil society observers assessing at the human rights records of these states. 'Best' performing are Denmark (0%!), the Czech Republic (3%) and Austria (8%). The website also links onwards to the full lists of pending cases for each country (through the HUDOC Exec database).

On a separate page, EIN explains its methodology, also acknowledging that while this is insightful, the overall numbers of violations found against a country as well as the types of violations also greatly matter.

A resource well worth a look!