32th plenary meeting of the CEPEJ,

Strasbourg, 13 and 14 June 2019

Exchange of views with the Judges of the European Court of Human Rights

Speech by Mr Ramin Gurbanov, President of the CEPEJ

It is a great pleasure and honour for the CEPEJ to welcome the new President of the European Court of Human Rights, Mr. Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos and several of his fellow judges, including our friend and former Vice-President of the CEPEJ, André Potocki.

Dear President, first of all, I would like to thank you personally and on behalf of all my colleagues for kindly honoring us with your presence in the plenary meeting of the CEPEJ.

Please accept our sincere congratulations for the recent election and we wish you all the best on such an important position.

It is the fourth time that we have the pleasure of welcoming the highest representatives of the Court at a CEPEJ meeting - former President Jean-Paul Costa visited the CEPEJ to support its work at its 5th anniversary; former President Dean Spielmann at the 10th anniversary of the CEPEJ; André Potocki visited us to encourage specific works in relation to the implementation of the principals enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and today, at your initiative Mr President, you come with several of your eminent colleagues to show your interest in the work of our Commission and see to what extent it can further contribute to the success of the essential mission that 47 European states have given to your Court.

In 2019 is the sixtieth anniversary of the European Court of Human Rights and taking this opportunity it should be unanimously stressed out that the Court for 60 years has been very productively contributing to the harmonization of European standards concerning human rights and freedoms.

The establishment of the CEPEJ “was due to excessive workload of the European Court suits, and by the idea of the creators reducing the load of the latter should be achieved by improving the efficiency and the quality of the judiciary in the Member States, and the offset of the load on litigation from the supranational to the national level”.

As a specialized institution of the Council of Europe, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice started to fulfill this mission by assisting the Member States in improving the administration of justice and bring their judiciary up to the standards and norms of the Council of Europe. The Commission plays a key role in facilitating the proper functioning of the Court's mechanisms and promotes the implementation of the requirements ensuing from the European Convention and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in matters of justice.

Indeed, for more than 15 years, CEPEJ has been actively engaged in promoting and supporting improvements in the efficiency and quality of justice in Europe. During these years, we have developed a wide range of tools for use by court presidents, senior justice officials and stakeholders in the field of evaluation of judicial systems, quality of justice and judicial timeframes, as well as mediation and enforcement of court decisions.

Mr President, dear Judges, dear colleagues, following the advices of the Secretary General I want to see more regular visits and more close collaboration between these two institutions of the Council of Europe. Our work during the 15th years is a strong evidence that the CEPEJ was set up as a true complement to the Court when promoting and safeguarding the Human Rights and the Rule of law.

The Chairs of our four working groups will further illustrate how we are trying to fulfil this mission while explaining briefly, in a few minutes, the current work of the CEPEJ. Thank you to the chairs for having accepted this task.

Today we would like to take the opportunity of your visit to discuss concretely possible interactions between the Court and the CEPEJ on the indicators which can be used to evaluate the efficiency and quality of justice as well as the implementation of the CEPEJ tools and documents in Member States.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to CEPEJ members who will introduce the discussion later on, and to the Judges of the Court who have kindly accepted to deliver their own reflection on these issues. I do hope that we will then have time for a free discussion.

In accordance with the statistical data indicated by the previous President of the European Court at the end of 2018 the number of pending cases was reduced in comparison with previous years and was around 56,000. However, this figure shows that the national systems have to be further improved in order to decrease the workload of the European Court. For these purposes, the implementation of the CEPEJ tools in the Member States plays significant role and this could be provided by more often references on the CEPEJ documents in the decisions by the judges of the European Court. Therefore, in order to establish more fruitful co-operation and interactions between these institutions of the Council of Europe and following the instructions of the Secretary General I propose the following:

• European Court of Human Rights could assist the CEPEJ in identifying areas for possible improvements in Member States as well as in defining the indicators which can be used to evaluate the efficiency and quality of justice (semi-annual and annual detailed information on characteristic violations of the convention on national level will be valuable for CEPEJ working groups);

• To improve the awareness of European Court judges about the CEPEJ activity, especially on wide range of tools and instruments by making the presentations to them in the court on regular basis (the CEPEJ adopted more than twenty seven studies on different fields of justice, wide range of guidelines, guides and other documents);

• Consequently this could increase the references in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on the different CEPEJ tools which in turn will stimulate implementation of them on national level and serve for improving judicial systems in Member States.

Dear President, dear Judges, I would like to reiterate firmly today the full willingness of the CEPEJ to continue its cooperation with the Court and with its Registry to serve together the noble objectives of the Council of Europe, which contribute to build every day a more human Europe.

Nobody else than the Council of Europe and its European Court of Human Rights are better placed to reach these objectives. We must work together endlessly, in spite of headwinds which will be bypassed, because our common goals are and will remain the strongest.