The European Union-Council of Europe Joint Project on “Supporting the Effective Implementation of Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) Judgments in the Field of Fundamental Rights” held its first study visit to Strasbourg.
The visit brought together high-level representatives of the TCC together with their counterparts at the Council of Europe for a discussion on the developments in the TCC case-law and new tendencies in the cases brought before it, as well as consistency between the standards applied by the TCC with the ones developed and promoted by the Council of Europe.
The first day of the meeting started with the keynote speeches of the President of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Robert Spano, Vice President of the ECtHR, Síofra O’Leary and President of the TCC, Zühtü Arslan. It was followed by discussion and information exchange sessions with the participation of the national judge of Türkiye, Saadet Yüksel and six judges of the ECtHR, as well as lawyers of the ECtHR Registry, dealing with the cases brought before the ECtHR against Türkiye, case management tools, filtering, prioritisation rules applied the ECtHR, as well as consistency of the approaches in the case-law of the ECtHR and the TCC were the main focuses of the discussions. The delegation also met with the lawyers seconded to the ECtHR Registry from different Turkish authorities. Director of Human Rights, Christophe Poirel and Secretary of the Venice Commission participated in the working lunch with the delegation.
On the second day of the visit, the TCC delegation meet with Leyla Kayacık, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Migration and Refugees, to discuss the work of the Council of Europe and standards in the field of migration. The day continued with a meeting with Frédéric Dolt, Head of Department, Implementation of Human Rights, Justice and Legal Co-operation Standards and Konul Gasimova, Head of Türkiye Unit during which the current and future cooperation projects with Türkiye were discussed with a special focus on how they support the effective implementation of the TCC judgments. A presentation on the Venice Commission, entailing their mandate and impact in Türkiye was delivered by its Secretariat.
The visit was assessed as extremely beneficial and fruitful by the visiting delegation, as well as by the Council of Europe representatives.
The Joint Project on “Supporting the Effective Implementation of Turkish Constitutional Court Judgments in the Field of Fundamental Rights” is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe. The Turkish Constitutional Court is the end beneficiary of the Project.
