Excellencies,

Dear colleagues,

I am convinced that our discussions will strengthen the European Court reform process towards long-term effectiveness of the European Convention for Human Rights system.

The ECHR has emerged as one of the most powerful checks on national authorities. But lax justice is driving growing numbers of individuals to pin all their hopes on the Court.

Due to the increase in awareness of European citizens of their rights under the Convention, the Court became a victim of its own success.

European citizens, including Moldovans, are increasingly taking their governments to court in Strasbourg, in their endless quest for efficient justice.

This is why Moldova supports the necessity of reforming the European Court of Human Rights, which would ensure and strengthen the effective protection of human rights.

The application of the Protocol 14 to the Convention opens new opportunities for the Court. In this context, we wish to congratulate the Russian Federation authorities for the recent ratification of the Protocol 14 to the Convention.

It is our belief that it is important to establish a roadmap of the ECHR reform, and to identify the circumstances that have generated the current situation.

I shall be brief by pointing out one of the main aspects that in our view can change the current situation of the ECHR.

In our opinion, the system should be improved in what concerns the Committee cases. These cases account for around 95% of the Court’s total case-load and require an enormous amount of the Court’s time and resources.

In practice nobody, except for the initial case-lawyer, checks the case-file. Even in the committees of three judges where the national judge is present, the case-file is never verified. It should be noted that there are committees of three judges where the national judge is not present. Accordingly, the judges’ decision is totally based on the facts and complaints as prepared by the Registry.

It is for this reason that it is necessary to reform the system and to base it on reality and not on hypocrisy. If the Registry is trusted with the preparation of the facts and complaints, it should be trusted with the adoption of the solution.

In the current setting, the judges merely waste their time, by rubber stamping committee case notes, prepared by others without any real possibility to verify the content of those notes.

Not only it is a matter of language but also a matter of case-load because we are speaking about thousands of committee cases disposed of monthly and it would be impossible for a judge to read through, so many case-files even in the event that he or she speaks the language of the file.

Accordingly, the judges shall not be involved in this process and the responsibility concerning the committee cases shall be entirely delegated to the Court’s Registry.

Finally, I wish to emphasize that Moldova fully supports the Declaration that will be submitted for adoption at this Conference, as a commitment that paves the way for a long-delayed ECHR reform. We strongly believe that this document, intended to help the Court speed up the processing of cases, states efforts to improve the protection of human rights and to help out the overburdened Strasbourg Court.

We also want to send a strong signal of the commitment of Moldovan democratic Government to Europe and to its common values of freedom, democracy and human rights.

Thank you for your attention.