High-level Conference "Tackling ill-treatment by the police: addressing challenges revealed by judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and by other Council of Europe bodies"

18 October 2019, Bečići (Montenegro) 

Distinguished Deputy Prime Ministers of Montenegro and North Macedonia,

Distinguished Ministers,

Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure and privilege to be here with you today in Montenegro at this High Level Conference with its self-explanatory title: “Tackling Ill-Treatment by the Police: addressing challenges revealed by judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and by other Council of Europe bodies”.

Allow me to start by expressing my gratitude to all of you who have kindly accepted our invitation. I would also like to thank most sincerely the Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro, H.E. Mr Zoran Pažin, who agreed to host us today in this splendid town of Bečići.

We are honoured to have also many other distinguished guests among us, and I would like to extend a special welcome to

• the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of North Macedonia, H.E. Mr Spasovski,
• the Minister of Justice of North Macedonia, Madam Deskoska,
• the Minister of the Interior of Montenegro, H.E. Mr Nuhodžić,
• the State Secretary of Justice of Serbia, Mr Illić,
• the Assistance Minister of Justice of Serbia, Mr Backović,
• the Assistant Minister of Interior of Serbia, Mr Kujundžić,
• the Croatian Ombudsman, Madam Vidović,
• and finally the Ambassador of the European Union to Montenegro, Mr Orav.

The fact that many of you have traveled long distances to be here today serves as a reminder to us all just how important this topic is and how attached you are to the values of democracy, rule of law and human rights underpinning the Council of Europe community of States.

It is frequently recalled by the European Court of Human Rights that Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights stipulating that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” enshrines one of the most fundamental values of a democratic society. It concerns a fundamental dimension of human rights, namely the right to one’s integrity and dignity.

Eradicating ill-treatment by State agents and preventing impunity – the central issue to be discussed today – is a very important matter which goes to the heart of the responsibility of member States regarding respect for human rights, the functioning of a genuine democracy and the rule of law.

This issue is unfortunately still among the major sources of concern before the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The experience of the Committee of Ministers in supervising the execution of the judgments of the European Court but also the reports and findings of the Council of Europe’s monitoring bodies indicate that the problem of excessive and unjustified use of force throughout Europe is persisting.

The shortcomings identified include notably inadequate legal frameworks, such as inadequate criminalisation and sanctions, for example regarding torture. The Committee of Ministers has insisted on torture being made a separate crime which cannot be the subject of prescription.

But shortcomings more frequently originate in illegal or inadequate practices. This is where judges, prosecutors and police officers have an important role to play.

Many applications have been and continue to be lodged by individuals before the European Court of Human Rights regarding ill-treatment. Through its case-law, the Court has developed minimum standards requiring that the State’s use of force remains within the boundaries of law. This is obviously central to ensure public confidence in the police.

Ensuring compliance with the European Court’s judgments rendered against your countries highlighting the risk of impunity of law enforcement agents is thus essential. In order to achieve this, ensuring better dissemination and knowledge of the European Court’s case law is very important and judicial schools and police academies have a significant role to play.

It is also important to follow-up the recommendations issued by various Council of Europe monitoring bodies. I would like at this juncture to welcome among us the President of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Mr Mykola Gnatovskyy. Your insight, Mr President, will be most useful given your extensive experience and knowledge of the issues which we are going to discuss.

I would also like to greet the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dr Nils Melzer. We look forward to hearing your remarks later this morning.

Ensuring respect for European standards in this sensitive area with the implications on the functioning of the State and the rule of law is not only important for the effective respect of human rights but also constitutes an important building brick in the European integration process.

This Conference today is thus organised within the framework of the Action under the EU-Council of Europe Joint Programme “Horizontal Facility in the Western Balkans and Turkey”.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the European Union for its support, which eloquently illustrates the fact that our two organisations share the same values regarding the protection of human, rights, democracy and the rule of law.  

The Conference is an opportunity to address complex issues by bringing States together and share their respective experience. The fact that the authorities of countries from South East Europe, through the Council of Europe’s cooperation programmes in the region, are increasingly working together to tackle various aspects of ill-treatment, including by the police and other law enforcement agencies, is very welcome.

A whole regional action has been dedicated to this under the “Horizontal Facility” programme. These efforts may be multilateral, and the conference today testifies perfectly to the importance of regional action in this field, or bilateral. As an illustration of this second aspect, in December 2019, the Council of Europe, together with the Croatian Association of Criminal Science and Practice, will hold a conference on effective investigation of ill-treatment, which will bring together Croatian legal practitioners, scholars, international experts and judges of the Strasbourg Court.

With a view to further assisting cooperation efforts, this year, the Council of Europe has supplemented its general online course on standards aimed at preventing ill-treatment with a course on the CPT standards under the HELP programme. The HELP course is designed to raise awareness on key CPT standards in five of the most important places of deprivation of liberty: police stations, prisons, immigration detention facilities, psychiatric establishments and social care homes. It particularly addresses the necessity to subject any instance of torture or other forms of ill-treatment by State agents to the criminal justice system to prevent ill-treatment becoming an accepted practice.

For the reasons explained above, the Committee of Ministers attaches paramount importance to the issues which we will examine today. In March this year, the Committee of Ministers held a thematic debate among all 47 member States on the duty to investigate violations of Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention by law enforcement officials.

Some of you present in this room also attended the thematic debate and witnessed that it triggered a productive exchange on the good practices to follow and the responses given to the European Court’s judgments by different member States.

I am confident that today’s conference will also serve as an excellent opportunity to identify difficulties encountered in combating ill-treatment and impunity and also share positive examples on ways of addressing these issues.

In this regard, you will see that the draft conclusions proposed for your adoption stress the importance of exchanging experience between member States. The whole experience of the Committee of Ministers demonstrates the value of sharing practices and good examples. I hope that the conference today will also pave the way for more cooperation activities of this kind.

Finally, I do believe that the conclusions to be endorsed at the end of the day will provide useful guidance at domestic level to prevent and combat ill-treatment and thus reinforce public confidence in public institutions, and the police in particular. The implementation of the conclusions should also help prevent new applications being lodged before the European Court.

I thank you for your attention and look forward to a fruitful exchange during this day.