Lize R. Glas

Access to Justice in the European Convention on Human Rights System

The numerous reforms to the Convention system of the past two decades have unquestionably had an effect on applicants’ means to access justice in the system. It is, however, open to question how these changes should be evaluated: with reference to the individual right to petition, or with reference to a more substantive and general conception of access to justice. This article explores these two approaches to the notion of access to justice both generally and for the Convention system specifically. The main argument of the article is to show the value of taking a substantive approach to access to justice in the Convention system. Thus, it challenges the centrality of the individual right to petition in discussions on reform of the system. Further, to show how taking a different perspective on access to justice may lead to different analyses, an evaluation in the light of both approaches is made of five sets of central changes to the Court’s procedure and its working method. This includes the revised Rule 47, single-judge formations and the priority policy.

The Functioning of the Pilot-Judgment Procedure of the European Court of Human Rights in Practice

Since the Court adopted its first pilot judgment in 2004, another 24 such judgments and an even greater number of follow-up rulings to these judgments have ensued. This article analyses and comments on the functioning of the procedure which these judgments set in motion: the pilot judgment procedure (PJP). Insights are thereby provided into a procedure that is of great importance to (potential) applicants to the Court and to the European Convention on Human Rights system from both a practical and a principled perspective. Rule 61 on the PJP, which the Court inserted to its Rules in 2011, provides the framework for the analysis, which is divided into the three stages of the procedure: run-up, judgment and execution. Based on the observations in the article, recommendations are made as to how the Court could improve the PJPs functioning. One such recommendation is that the Court could perhaps make better use of the possibility to join application brought by different persons in the case selected from treatment under the PJP. This approach can help shed light on different aspects of the structural problem identified in the judgment and uncover its full scope.

II European Convention on Human Rights

Under Article 46 of the European Convention of Human Rights (the Convention), the States Parties undertake to abide by the final judgment of the European Court on Human Rights (the Court) in any case to which they are parties, execution being supervised by the Committee of Ministers (CoM). Consequently, the States are under a legal obligation to execute any adverse judgment.1 The Convention system’s credibility ‘depends to a great extent on execution’.2 ‘Execution’ refers here to concrete measures taken in consequence of a judgment under Article 46. ‘Execution’ can thus be distinguished from ‘implementation’, which concerns measures taken to give effect to the Convention generally.3 This contribution discusses some recent developments in the light of Article 46.