THE EXECUTION OF JUDGMENTS OF THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS – CURRENT ISSUES

ĐUKANOVIĆ Anđela (Naučni saradnik u Institutu za međunarodnu politiku i privredu, Beograd), andjela@diplomacy.bg.ac.rs

The regional protection of human rights before the European Court of Human Rights is indisputably the most efficient, and it is constantly evolving. Despite this, we have recently started to detect some problems with the execution of judgments that have revealed structural or systemic problems in the domestic law. Maintaining the authority of the Court\'s judgments is fundamental for the functioning of the established system of human rights protection. Significant news concerning the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights is that the refusal of the responsible country to execute one judgment has recently led to the application of the procedure from Protocol No.14 for the first time. In this context, the necessity of this procedure is questionable. Although the majority have required the triggering of this procedure, it is unlikely that it will be applied to all judgments which are not executed. Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights are largely respected, but sometimes this is not the case, usually when the judgment is associated with politically sensitive issues, or when the execution of judgement requires significant or complex interventions in domestic legal order. The question is, will any special procedures for monitoring enable the execution of such judgments. The author concludes that this seems unlikely. It should also be noted that the European Court of Human Rights has started ordering very specific non-pecuniary measures in its judgements, hoping that this will improve the level of judgment enforcement. In our opinion, this approach should be applied with caution.

Keywords: execution of judgments, human rights, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Council of Europe