The Copenhagen declaration : wrapping up the Interlaken reform?

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights (hereafter ECtHR or the Court) is aremarkably active international court, second in output of judgments onlyto the European Court of Justice, an institution with more than six timesthe budget and jurisdiction over private and public law questions in a widerange of fields.1 By comparison, the ECtHR deals only with cases againstits 47 Member States concerning one or more of between one and twodozen fundamental rights depending on which protocols the respondentstate in question has signed. Nevertheless, the Court receives tens of thou-sands of applications every year from the around 830 million citizens itsjurisdiction encompasses, and since the 1990s it has been unable to processthese cases at the rate they were lodged, leading to the build-up of abacklog of cases.