6 - Improving Compliance

Summary

INTRODUCTION

As things currently stand – apart from persuasion, suspension of voting rights on the Committee of Ministers, and expulsion – the Council of Europe lacks any direct means of inducing states to improve their Convention violation records. In many countries, as discussed in Chapter 2, systemic violations stem from problems which are simply too intractable to be dealt with by executive or legislative fiat, while in others the national and international legal and political costs of violation rank lower than those associated with making the necessary changes. Among other things Chapters 3 and 4 argued that these difficulties could be ameliorated by further development of the Court's currently cautious policy of identifying what needs to be done at the national level to correct the source of violations, and by refinements to the method of adjudication at Strasbourg. However, of themselves these are unlikely to be sufficient. The key question, therefore, is what more the Council of Europe can do to increase domestic compliance pressures. A key element concerns the effective delivery of information from member states to Strasbourg and vice versa. While improving the role of existing national and European institutions may provide part of the answer, this chapter argues that a case can also be made for the creation of a European Fair Trials Commission and for the development by the Council of Europe of a much more robust, coherent, and thorough policy with respect to National Human Rights Institutions and the European Commissioner for Human Rights.