Protocol No. 14 and the Reform of the European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights is currently receiving tens of thousands of applications per year, and despite the considerable measures the Court has taken to improve its working methods, it is unable to avoid an ever-growing backlog. The answer by the Member States of the Council of Europe to this dramatic development is Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, signed on 13 May 2004. Some of the Protocols provisions will have a significant impact on the admissibility of individual applications and on the way in which the Court examines them. In this book, the authors try to probe the implications of the reform for the Court and for the applicants. The book is the result of a research project undertaken by the Institute for Human Rights of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). Most of the authors are members of that Institute. Other contributors are a key negotiator for Belgium of Protocol No. 14, and researchers of the Institute for Constitutional Law of the University of Leuven.