European Commission for Human Rights

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The European Commission for Human Rights (EKMR) was an organ of the Council of Europe and was supposed to ensure compliance with and enforcement of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It was established in Strasbourg in 1954 and was based there until it was dissolved in 1998.

organization

The original system had three supervisory bodies to protect the rights guaranteed in the ECHR : the European Commission for Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which is composed of the foreign ministers of the member states.

The Commission carried out two types of proceedings: the state complaint and the individual complaint.

In the case of the state complaint, to which the Member States had to submit, the proceedings before the Commission preceded the court proceedings before the ECHR.

The individual complaint procedure, for which the member states initially had to acknowledge the Commission's competence, was only permitted before the Human Rights Commission and could not turn into an individual action before the ECHR. Only the Commission, the Member State of which the injured party was a national, the complaining Member State and the respondent Member State had the right to bring proceedings.

If the commission had accepted a complaint for a decision, it determined a violation of the ECHR, if applicable, and tried to bring about an amicable settlement of the dispute. The Commission thus acted as a filter for the Court of Justice. Your decision was not legally binding, it was merely a recommendation. If no amicable agreement could be reached, either the Commission (after giving a corresponding opinion to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe) or one of the member states concerned could appeal to the ECHR if the defendant state had previously submitted to the jurisdiction of the ECHR. The judgment of the ECHR was then legally binding.

Resolution and consequences

Due to the rapidly increasing number of complaints, the monitoring bodies of the European Convention on Human Rights were reformed, which came into force on November 1, 1998 in the form of the 11th Additional Protocol. This protocol abolished the Commission and transformed the Court of Justice into a permanent one, which since then has exclusive jurisdiction over complaints.

The reports and decisions of the European Commission for Human Rights can be found in volumes published by the Council of Europe called "Decisions and reports / European Commission of Human Rights = Décisions et rapports / Commission Européenne des Droits de l'Homme".

literature

  • Mario Oetheimer / Guillem Cano Palomares, European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in: Max Planck Encyclopaedia of International Law.