European Convention on Human Rights ECHR - Procedural and institutional protocols European Convention on Human Rights ECHR - Protocol 14: Protocol 14 Main article: Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights Protocol 14 follows on from Protocol 11 in proposing to further improve the efficiency of the Court. It seeks to "filter" out cases that have less chance of succeeding along with those that are broadly similar to cases brought previously against the same member state. Furthermore, a case will not be considered admissible where an applicant has not suffered a "significant disadvantage". This latter ground can only be used when an examination of the application on the merits is not considered necessary and where the subject-matter of the application had already been considered by a national court. A new mechanism was introduced
by Protocol 14 to assist enforcement of judgements by the Committee of
Ministers. The Committee can ask the Court for an interpretation of a
judgement and can even bring a member state before the Court for
non-compliance of a previous judgement against that state. Protocol 14 also
allows for European Union accession to the Convention. The protocol has been ratified by every Council of
Europe member state, Russia being last in February 2010. It entered into
force on 1 June 2010. A provisional Protocol 14bis had been opened for
signature in 2009. Pending the ratification of Protocol 14 itself, 14bis was
devised to allow the Court to implement revised procedures in respect of the
states which have ratified it. It allowed single judges to reject manifestly
inadmissible applications made against the states that have ratified the
protocol. It also extended the competence of three-judge chambers to declare
applications made against those states admissible and to decide on their
merits where there already is a well-established case law of the Court. Now
that all Council of Europe member states have ratified Protocol 14, Protocol
14bis has lost its raison d'être and according to its own
terms ceased to have any effect when Protocol 14 entered into force on 1 June
2010. |