By the end of 2018 the European Court of Human Rights had a caseload of 56,350 pending cases, virtually unchanged from the 56,250 applications pending at the end of the previous year, President Guido Raimondi reported at the Court’s annual press conference on 24 January 2019.

The stable level of the caseload is due to the fact that the number of applications allocated to a judicial formation in 2018 was 43,100 (63,350 in 2017), while a similar number, 42,761, was disposed of judicially (85,951 in 2017). President Raimondi noted that the 2017 figures had been affected by a large number of applications from Turkey.

At the press conference President Raimondi highlighted the importance of the subsidiarity principle, which placed States at the forefront of protecting the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, which meant States had to play their role fully in the Convention system.

He noted that the main challenge for the Court was dealing with complex or novel cases before Chambers, which consist of seven judges, and which could not be dealt with by a Committee of three judges.

He also observed that the Court had launched a dedicated, non-contentious phase in respect of all Contracting States, the goal of which was to facilitate friendly settlements.

At the press conference the Court also released its annual activity report and its statistics for 2018. The annual table of violations by country shows that the States with the highest number of judgments against them, finding at least one violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, were Russia (238 judgments), Turkey (140), Ukraine (86), Romania (71) and Hungary (35). At 31 December 2018 the majority of pending cases were against Russia (20.9 %), Romania (15.1 %), Ukraine (12.9 %), Turkey (12.6 %), and Italy (7.2 %).