” “"If the European Court of Human Rights becomes inefficient, it will lose credibility". Jean Paul Costa, French, new president of the Strasbourg Court, gave the yearly press conference yesterday to review the work carried out by that body, and spoke of the excessively high number of pending suits that "risk paralysing the Court". According to Costa, the Court "needs the support of the national jurisdictions and authorities"; in this sense, "if Protocol 14 is not enforced soon, the future of the Court will be seriously endangered". It has been set up specifically to help the Court deal more quickly with the rising number of pending suits, which at present are 90 thousand, the vast majority of which "have no chance of being admitted": Russia alone has over 19 thousand, Romania 10 thousand and Turkey 9 thousand. To be enforced, the Protocol must be ratified by all of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe: 45 countries have signed it so far, only Russia is missing. The reform plan entrusted to the Protocol "focuses on three aspects: preventing violations on a national scale and improving the legal proceedings of each country; making the petition-filtering process as efficient as possible; speed up the execution of Court sentences". (to be continued)” “
