Tuesday 11 May 2010

Court Judgment Implementation in Romania and Moldova

Both Moldova and Romania need to step up their current efforts to ensure that the European Court's judgments are fully implemented. That is the main conclusion of the of Christos Pourgourides, PACE rapporteur on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. He visited both state parties to the ECHR earlier this month. Specifically on Romania, the rapporteur addressed "the problems of non-enforcement of domestic final decisions, including those concerning restitution of properties nationalised under the communist regime, or compensation for their loss, and the excessive length of domestic judicial proceedings." Concerning neighbouring Moldova, the rapporteur dealt specifically with "the problems of abusive use of force by police officers, lack of effective investigation into such abuses, poor conditions in detention facilities and non-enforcement of domestic final decisions." For the general progress report written by the rapporteur last year, click here. The travelling by the rapporteur may well serve to keep implementation on the agenda in state parties with structural deficiencies. These are the links to the full press releases on Romania and Moldova. More than mere good intentions are needed, as the rapporteur himself emphasized.