Ukraine among States slammed for delays implementing European Court judgments

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has named nine states with “major systemic deficiencies” which are causing repeated violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In a resolution adopted on 26 January, the Assembly said structural problems in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine were causing “extremely worrying delays” in implementing judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.

The main problems were deaths or ill-treatment caused by law-enforcement officials, unlawful or over-long detention, legal proceedings which take too long and court judgments which are not enforced. Resolving these issues at national level would reduce the number of cases coming to the Strasbourg Court, the parliamentarians pointed out.

On the same day, Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice posted a report saying that the European Court of Human Rights had extended the timeframe for implementing the pilot judgment in the case of Yury Mykhailovych Ivanov v. Ukraine by six months.

This pilot judgment bound Ukraine to introduce an effective and sufficient means of legal defence against non-enforcement or delay in implementing rulings handed down by a domestic court.

The Ministry states that in implementation of this, it has drawn up a draft law “On State guaranties regarding enforcement of court rulings” which was tabled by the Cabinet of Ministers on 14 January 2011 for parliament’s consideration.

In view of these measures, the Ministry reports, in a letter from 21 January the European Court extended the timeframe for implementing the pilot judgment to 15 July 2011.

From reports at PACE and Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice