CEDH · PRESS;GENERAL;ENG — 28 janvier 2003

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .sDD7C1C55 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:389.85pt } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s94935B0F { width:389.85pt; display:inline-block } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s3C4DB099 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left; font-size:10pt } .sAD66F3FB { width:10.59pt; display:inline-block } .s901C2590 { width:56.7pt; display:inline-block } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS 045   28.1.2003   Press release issued by the Registrar   Call for European Union to accede to European Convention on Human Rights   The President of the European Court of Human Rights has today renewed his call for the European Union to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. He also said that reform of the Convention was urgent.   Speaking at the Court’s annual press conference in Strasbourg, President Luzius Wildhaber underlined the importance of EU accession to the Convention to ensure coherent human rights protection at European level.   Mr Wildhaber also stressed that reform of the Convention was “necessary and urgent” to deal with the Court’s workload, which continued to rise last year. At the start of 2003 there were 29,410 applications pending before the Court’s decision bodies.   Options for reform included establishing an accelerated procedure - and possibly a new section of the Court - to deal with unmeritorious and repetitive or “clone” cases and ultimately a separate “filtering” mechanism.   The statistics for 2002, issued today, reveal that the Court’s caseload is still rising. While overall productivity has continued to increase, the total number of judgments delivered by the Court went down slightly last year, from 889 to 844. This can be attributed to a reduction in the number of Italian length-of-proceedings cases following the introduction of the Pinto Law in Italy.   The 2002 table shows that the highest number of judgments finding at least one violation were delivered against Italy (325), then France (61), Turkey (54), the United Kingdom (30) and Romania (26).   The statistics include, for the first time, an annual country-by-country statistics table showing the number of violations of the Convention by Convention Article, which reveal that the vast majority of the judgments against Italy, and a substantial number of those against France, involved the length of judicial proceedings.   ***   Further information about the Court can be found on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Registry of the European Court of Human Rights F – 67075 Strasbourg Cedex Contacts:   Roderick Liddell (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 24 92)   Emma Hellyer (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15)   Stéphanie Klein (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54) Fax: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 27 91   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. On 1 November 1998 a full-time Court was established, replacing the original two-tier system of a part-time Commission and Court.