Press Office
Αθήνα, 9 Μαρτίου 2022
Hellenic Parliament committee on monitoring the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights briefed by Greek ECHR Judge Ioannis Ktistakis
The briefing by the Greek ECHR Judge Ioannis Ktistakis was the subject of today’s meeting of the Special Permanent Committee on monitoring the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The main subject of the briefing by Mr Ioannis Ktistakis, according to the agenda, was: “The entry into force of the 15th additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and Greece”.
In his speech, Mr Ktistakis underlined that today “there are 2.214 pending individual appeals against Greece, many more than those pending in previous years. Of these, 1782 (81%) relate exclusively to detention conditions in the country’s penitentiaries. The remaining approximately 432 refer to almost all articles of the European Convention, but nevertheless, the ones that stand out concern the administration’s non-compliance to national court decisions, those on police violence, freedom of expression and property rights. […] In comparison, the above 2.214 pending appeals represent more than 3% of the total pending appeals which currently amount to 70.150 in Strasbourg from the total of 47 states. To give you an idea of the volume, every year more 40.000 appeals are lodged in Strasbourg, while at the respective Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg only and average of 1.700 are filed every year. The numbers in Strasbourg are much higher. Greece is in the top ten of the contracting states with the highest number of pending appeals.”
The Chairman of the Committee on monitoring the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights Maximos Charakopoulos noted the following after the briefing by the Greek ECHR judge: “From what you have presented to us, it seems that despite any positive steps that have been taken and which were analysed in the previous meeting by the Deputy Minister of Justice Georgios Kotsiras, there is still much that needs to be done and implemented as quickly as possible. We do undoubtedly not feel honoured by the fact that Greece is in the top ten of countries with the most appeals to the ECHR and clearly, swifter steps need to be taken to address the causes that led to these appeals.”
Mr Charakopoulos also underlined that: “it is very important to see how we can treat this cause of appeals and in terms of the essential detention conditions that have to do with the need to have more modern penitentiaries, not to have this overcrowding that leads to the appeals and, of course, the establishment of the national legal remedy, that we have discussed extensively in our committee, and which would drastically reduce, I believe, the appeals to the ECHR. Regarding that we have already requested in writing to be briefed by the competent Minister of Civil Protection, in order to see when the Government will be ready to bring the changes to the penitentiary codes”.
The Chairman of the Monitoring Committee expressed his agreement with Mr Ktistaki’s statement that Greece cannot be compared to countries of the Council of Europe that are not even EU members. “It is only reasonable to compare the country’s performance with EU countries and in particular the first group of members”.
In his introductory remarks Mr Charakopoulos referred briefly to the data provided at the previous committee meeting by the Deputy Minister of Justice Georgios Kotsiras “regarding the improvement of the indexes that rank our country among the “black sheep” in pending ECHR appeals, based on the data presented to us, at the end of 2021 the total number of pending judgements by the ECHR was 87, a number that, as Mr Kotsiras said, is at a record low for our country as far as pending decisions are concerned”.
Lastly, he pointed out that “the cross-party bill we submitted may not have been accepted, however, I think it produced positive results, clearly raising in the public debate the issue of the country’s compliance with the decisions of the ECHR. Already, in the direction of what we set in the draft law for the alignment of the national legislation with the European Convention on Human Rights, but also with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, regulations have been legislated by the Ministry of Justice. Furthermore, changes to the penitentiary codes are imminent, as we were informed by the Secretary General of the Government Stelios Koutnatzis. We are expecting there the establishment of the national legal aid, which is one of the main reasons for the appeals, convictions and fines for the country. And in this respect we have addressed an invitation to the Minister of Citizen Protection Takis Theodorikakos, to inform us about the timetable of the legislative initiative”.
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