Cameron calls for far-reaching reforms to European rights court

Jan 25, 2012, 16:36 GMT

Strasbourg, France - British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday called for the European Court of Human Rights to be overhauled to prevent it becoming bogged down in a backlog of cases and 'going over national decisions where it does not need to.'

Cameron made the call during a speech at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Britain currently holds the rotating presidency of the 47-nation council, which established the European Court on Human Rights in 1959 to ensure respect for human rights among member states.

In recent years, the court, which enforces the European Convention on Human Rights, has become inundated with claims, creating a backlog of more than 150,000 applications.

Cameron told the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly the court 'should be free to deal with the most serious violations of human rights; it should not be swamped with an endless backlog of cases.'

It should 'not act as a small claims court' or 'undermine its own reputation by going over national decisions where it does not need to.'

The British leader called for 'new rules' to allow the court to focus on 'the most important cases' and for new procedures for nominating judges, including clearer guidelines on national selection procedures.

'And we are hoping to get consensus on strengthening subsidiarity - the principle that where possible, final decisions should be made nationally,' he said.

His remarks follow criticism in Britain of some the court's decisions.

The court has declared Britain's blanket ban on prisoner voting rights to be an infringement of prisoners' rights.

Last week, the Strasbourg-based court also upheld a challenge by radical preacher Abu Qatada to his deportation from Britain to Jordan.

Cameron said he agreed that countries should not deport people to countries where they risked being tortured, but that governments also needed to deal with people who 'have no right to live in your country and whom you are convinced mean to do your country harm.'

'Together we have to find a solution to this,' he said, expressing concern that 'the concept of human rights is in danger of being distorted.'

Writing in The Independent newspaper, the ECHR's top judge, Nicolas Bratza, said 'the criticism relating to interference' in British affairs was 'simply not borne out by the facts.'

Of the 955 applications decided in 2011 that involved Britain, the court found rights violations in just eight cases, he said.

As for reducing the court's caseload, the court's own reforms were bearing fruit, he said.

Under a new prioritization policy, the number of applications to the court fell 30 per cent in 2011, according to Bratza.

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