The Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia together with the Council of Europe Office in Yerevan organised a round-table discussion on “The European Court of Human Rights: New Challenges and Future Perspectives” in Yerevan on 12 March 2015. The discussion was attended by Arman Tatoyan, Deputy Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia, Deputy Representative of the Government of the Republic of Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights, Artyom Sedrakyan, Head of Department for Relations with the European Court of Human Rights, Camille Gangloff, Project Coordinator of CoE Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law, Mathias Kloth, staff member of Cooperation with International Institutions and Civil Society Division, Ana-Maria Telbis, former European Court’s lawyer, CoE expert as well as employees of the Department for Relations with the European Court attended the discussion.
During the meeting reflections were made on the new admissibility criteria of complaints at European Court and current challenges, the large number of pending cases and solutions to problems determined thereby. Particularly, the reasons for the backlog of cases, methodological and systematic approach to repeated cases, well established case-law and the procedure for examination of cases by a Committee of three judges and other important issues were touched upon.
Arman Tatoyan, Deputy Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia greeted those present and highlighted the importance of conducting discussions in such format. In his words, the project is connected with the activities of the Department for Relations with the European Court of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia and aims at introducing the legal standards of the European Court and fully implementing them. “Each Member State of the Council of Europe is concerned today about the challenges faced by the European Court of Human Rights and each Member State tries to take measures to make the activities of this institution more effective”, the Deputy Minister said. Arman Tatoyan referred also to the introduction of the institution of ad-hoc judges highlighting the importance of a single Judge procedure and the effectiveness of executing the European Court judgments. Camille Gangloff, Project Coordinator, expressed her gratitude for the co-operation with the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia and voiced hope that it will be continuous. “The main goal of the project is to fully improve the system of safeguarding human rights in Armenia which is exactly in the focus of attention of all Council of Europe Member States”, Camille Gangloff noted.
CoE expert Ana-Maria Telbis spoke about the activities and challenges of the European Court of Human Rights, introduced the statistics of pending cases at the European Court, the number of pending cases in respecct of Armenia. Annually it totals 1040, 184 of which are cases examined by a single judge.
The event was attended also by representatives of the Chamber of Advocates of the Republic of Armenia, Justice Academy of the Republic of Armenia, Judicial Department of the Republic of Armenia, Staff of the National Assembly as well as by independent human rights defenders.
