The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers holds its fourth and last special “human rights” meeting1 of 2009 from 1st to 3rd December. The Committee supervises the adoption of individual measures needed to erase the consequences for applicants of violations established by the Court (over and above the payment of any just satisfaction awarded by the Court itself) and/or general measures (legislative or other changes) aimed at preventing new similar violations.
374 new cases will be examined, a number of which raise questions related to the adoption of new individual or general measures. The other cases are either linked to issues which are already examined or do not reveal any special problems.
In the remaining cases, at this meeting, the Committee will examine progress made, notably as far as some 500 legislative or other reforms are concerned. At the meeting, the Committee will also consider the adoption of final resolutions in over 80 cases in which all of the necessary execution measures have been taken, and will assess whether some 37 further cases are ready to be closed.
A preliminary list of items/cases to be examined at the meeting (the 1072nd meeting of the Ministers’ deputies) is available on the website www.coe.int/execution, under the heading “CM-DH meetings”. To this list should be added the judgments which became final after the last “human rights” meeting (September 2009). The latest public information on the main cases under examination is available, on a country-by-country basis, on the website www.coe.int/execution, under the heading “State of execution”.
Interim Resolutions and the most important decisions will become public at the end of the meeting. Other decisions, and the annotated agenda (with information on the progress made in the different cases), will be made public once formally adopted a fortnight after the meeting. These texts, together with more comprehensive information on the execution of judgments by member states, are available at www.coe.int/t/cm/home_en.asp and www.coe.int/execution. The Committee of Ministers’ Annual Report 2008 on its supervision of judgments is also available on these sites.
1 According to Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights: “1 The High Contracting Parties undertake to abide by the final judgment of the Court in any case to which they are parties. 2 The final judgment of the Court shall be transmitted to the Committee of Ministers, which shall supervise its execution.”
