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The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE) published the annual report for 2015 on its supervision of the execution of judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The report is the ninth in a series of relevant publications, which assess the execution of the Court’s judgments by the states concerned.

The press statement disseminated by the Council of Europe website says that efforts engaged to bring to a successful conclusion the execution processes in pending cases led to a new record number of cases closed in 2015 (1,537 cases versus 1,502 in 2014). Many of the cases closed relate to long-standing structural problems, notably the excessive length of judicial proceedings. The report also shows a further decrease in the total number of pending cases, which were 10,652 by the end of 2015.

Despite the undeniable progress recorded by the authors, the statistics still show that major challenges, outlined is the increase of cases pending for more than 5 years. Whilst these cases accounted for some 20% of the total at the end of 2011, by the end 2015 they accounted for around 55%.

Another challenge highlighted by the report is related to “pockets of resistance” linked to deeply-rooted prejudices of a social nature (for example toward Roma or certain minorities) or related to political considerations, national security or even to the situations in areas/regions of “frozen conflict”. These cases evidently require considerable efforts from the States concerned, from the Committee of Ministers and the Department for the execution of the European Court’s judgments.

The year 2015 highlighted the crucial role of dialogue, the execution of controversial or politically sensitive judgments, the reports says.

According the data the just satisfaction amount awarded to applicants is  53,766,388 Euros for the year 2015, which is the lowest number since 2010

In 2015 Armenia has 25 cases pending execution, which is less than in 2014 (36 cases). In 2015 the states, which mostly failed executing the judgments, are Italy (2421), Turkey (1591) Russia (1549) Ukraine (1052), and Romania (652)

In 2015 Armenia executed payments on two cases within deadline in 2015, on three cases - outside the deadline and one case awaits confirmation of the payment.

The Average length of execution of leading cases closed by Armenia is about 4,4 years, which is average duration, compared with other states.

Just satisfaction awarded by Armenia for 2014-2015 is 234,820 Euros, which is a significant, grow as compared with 2014 (6030 Euros). 

In 2015 Armenia’s cases pending are related to Inadequate medical care in detention; practice of placing accused in a metal cage during trial (Ashot Harutyunyan vs. Armenia), Ill-treatment and torture in police custody and ineffective investigations (Virabyan vs. Armenia) and the third one related to the “Impossibility for displaced persons to gain access, in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, to their homes and properties in Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories, lack of effective remedies” (Chigarov and others).

The report says in April 2015 the Armenian authorities transmitted an action plan providing information on individual and general measures taken and envisaged to ensure compliance with the European Court’s judgments in this group of cases.

According to the action plan, following a set of reforms introduced after these judgments, cages have been removed from the Armenian courts. As to the problem of adequate medical care in prisons, a set of reforms, including legislative ones, accompanied notably by training measures, have already taken place and others are foreseen. Bilateral consultations are under way to assess the impact of the measures adopted in order to present an updated action plan/report addressing the remaining issues.