EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION / Alla Tymofeyeva (ed.)

3. EXECUTION OF JUDGMENTS OF THE COURT Within three months of the date of the ECtHR judgment, any party to the proceedings may ask the ECtHR to refer the case to the Grand Chamber. This rule does not apply to the decisions of the Court, which may not be subject to review, and to the judgments issued by the Committee of three judges, which become final immediately. When the parties to the proceeding before the Court declare that they will not request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber, the judgment of a Chamber becomes final. The Chamber judgment is also declared final when the panel of the Grand Chamber rejects the request to refer under Article 43 of the ECHR. In addition, any judgement of the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR is final. In accordance with Article 46 of the ECHR, the final judgment of the Court is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers, which shall supervise its execution. The States are under an obligation to abide by the final judgment of the Court in any case to which they are parties. Four times per year (usually in March, June, September, and December) a special three-day meeting of the Committee of Ministers is held to discuss exclusively how the member states of the Council of Europe are executing the ECtHR judgments. This format is called the “meeting of the Committee of Ministers on Human Rights”. Despite the name, the ministers of the Council of Europe countries themselves rarely participate in these meetings, although they may be present when discussing predominantly important political issues. Usually, the meetings of the Committee of Ministers on Human Rights are attended by national delegations from the ministries of foreign affairs or justice. Only a small amount of the cases are considered directly at the meetings, but technically the CoE Committee Ministers monitor the execution of all cases based upon information received from the parties and the other sources. Similar cases are combined in groups bearing the name of the earliest ruling on a particular problem. The list of cases and groups of cases to be examined at a particular meeting is listed on its agenda, which is approved by the Committee of Ministers at the end of the previous meeting. This list is a public document. Unlike the ECtHR and the PACE, the Committee of Ministers does not hold public hearings. At the end of each meeting, the Committee of Ministers accepts decisions in each case, where it evaluates the progress of the case execution. These decisions are published at the end of the Committee of Ministers’ meeting, namely, at the end of the third day of the meeting or the following day, on the website of the Committee of Ministers. The status of execution in each case is reflected in the HUDOC-EXEC database. Within six months of the date when the judgment became final, the state is required to provide an action plan for its execution or an action report containing information on the individual and general measures taken. Individual measures are taken to restore the applicant in the violated rights and usually include a compensation of the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. General measures are taken to prevent similar violations of human rights in the future. The action plan should be updated by the state as the execution process progresses. Action reports are presented when the state believes that all necessary measures in the case have been taken and asks the Committees of Ministers to terminate supervision of the case. Apart from the information provided by the states, the CoE Committee of Ministers also analyses information received from the applicants, NGOs, and the other subjects. The execution of the ECtHR judgments can take a long time, sometimes even decades. If the Committee of Ministers considers that the supervision of the execution of a final judgment is hindered by a problem of interpretation of the judgment, it may refer the matter to the Court for a ruling on the question of interpretation. A referral decision shall require a majority vote of two-thirds of the representatives entitled to sit on the committee. Moreover, if the Committee of Ministers considers that the respondent state refuses to abide by a final

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EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION