Annual Report of Court and Opening of Judicial Year

Last week, the Court issued its Annual Report over 2010. It shows a continuing of the worrying trend of increasses: 140,000 pending cases at the end of 2010, a rise of 7% in allocated applications and a rise of 65% (!) in requests for itnerim measures. Webcasts of the press conference of President Costa (held on Thursday 27 January) are available on the Court's website. A webcast of the solemn hearing which formally marked the opening of the judicial year can also be found there, as well as of a seminar entitled "What are the limits to the evolutive interpretation of the Convention?".

In addition to the report, the Court has put number of shorter documents online. There is a clear pie chart of pending applications which shows that as in previous years over half of all pending applications comes from Russia, Turkey, Romania and Ukraine. What may be more striking is that 37 (out of a total of 47) state parties account for only 22,1% of the total of applications. For more country per country information and charts ,there is the Analysis of Statistics 2010. It also shows statistics on how quickyl cases are dealt with, divided according to the urgency category. This reveals that even among the highest urgency category, several dozens of cases have been pending several years. Another clear sign that new and creative ways of solving the case-load issue are needed. Finally, the Court published a Table of Violations per country.

The first steps to evaluate the Protocol 14 and post-Interlaken reforms will be taken at a ministerial meeting in Izmir in Turkey at the end of April.