Tuesday 1 June 2010

Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights entered into force today

The long history of Protocol 14 to the ECHR has come to an end today.

The Protocol that amends the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) has taken a long way until its ratification - see some of my posts on the topic here, here, here or here.

With the entry into force of the Protocol, the work of the European Court of Human Rights (not to be confused with the EU Court!), which is overloaded with cases, will be reformed so that inter alia admissibility checks can be done more easily, speeding up the judicial process and freeing resources for those cases that are actually admissible.

Protocol 14 is also important for the EU, because it allows the accession of our Union to the human rights convention and the jurisdiction of the human rights court. I've covered the respective EU procedure in several posts.

In this sense, today is a good day for human rights in Europe and hopefully also for both the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union.

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