At its Human Rights meeting on 15-17 September, the Committee of Ministers ended its supervision of the execution of the Ledonne v. Italy judgment which has been the leading case to a group of cases concerning violations of Article 6 of the Convention on account of the excessive length of criminal proceedings. More than 160 repetitive cases belonging to this group of cases were already closed previously as all necessary individual measures had been taken.
A wide range of legislative reforms were adopted by the authorities, in particular since 2017, to streamline and modernise the criminal justice system, limit the number of new proceedings, and speed up the absorption of backlogs. The authorities’ action was further compounded by the increased recruitment of judges and supporting staff, the digitisation of criminal court proceedings and the additional financial resources awarded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
These measures yielded positive and consolidated results regarding all major relevant indicators (i.e. clearance rate, disposition time and inflow of cases), bringing the average length of criminal proceedings at all three levels of jurisdiction within acceptable parameters and placing the criminal justice system on sustainable and efficient tracks which can be expected to continue generating further progress in the years to come.
In the light of the above and taking also into account the existence in Italy of an effective compensatory remedy for excessively lengthy judicial proceedings, similar violations should no longer occur.
Final resolution CM/ResDH(2025)256
