CONTROVERSIAL RULINGS by the European court of human rights are in danger of having a corrosive effect on people’s support for civil liberties, the British prime minister has warned.
Addressing the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, which oversees the court, David Cameron said it was “not surprising that some people start asking questions about whether the current arrangements are really sensible”.
Citing the court’s ruling opposing the UK’s attempt to deport the Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, Mr Cameron said: “For too many people, the very concept of rights is in danger of slipping from something noble to something discredited and that should be of deep concern to us all.
“Upholding and promoting human rights is not something governments and courts can do alone. It is something we need all our societies to be engaged with.”
The court decided this month that Abu Qatada could not be removed from the UK to Jordan because there was a danger he would be tried there on evidence that may have been obtained through torture.
Even before the prime minister spoke, the UK appeared to have won a significant victory in securing the general support of member states in its drive to reform the court in Strasbourg.
On Tuesday night members voted unanimously to agree that the court should be “subsidiary” to national authorities – governments, courts and parliaments – in guaranteeing human rights.
The assembly backed the idea of prioritising “difficulties encountered in states which do not appropriately implement [European human rights] convention standards” – an emphasis that could see the court concentrate its resources on less compliant countries.
A Dutch representative pointed out that 70 per cent of pending applications before the court came from six countries: Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. “Structural deficiencies” in these countries were perpetuating the court’s backlog, he said, and not enough was being done to remedy them.
The assembly urged that national parliaments “should play a key role in stemming the flood of applications submerging the court” by examining whether draft laws were compatible with convention requirements.
Britain has tabled three key reforms to the Council of Europe on reforming the court:
- The insertion of a “sunset clause”, which would say that any application pending before the court longer than a set period of time (about one to two years) would be automatically struck off the list. This would be done without judicial intervention.
- Banning cases that have been dealt with properly in national courts, known as a new admissibility criteria.
- Giving the court a discretion to choose which cases to consider along the lines of the working of the supreme court.
This would be mean that the Strasbourg court is not obliged to give an opinion on all matters.
– ( Guardianservice)