Protocol No. 14 to the Convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms: history of elaboration and major novels

The article is dedicated to analysis of the reasons for reforming the control mechanism established on the basis of the Convention of the Council of Europe for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for the period from 2000 to 2004 (as a result thereof Protocol No. 14 to the Convention was adopted). The article also dwells on the principal stages of development of this Act.The following problems are considered in the article: changes made by Protocol No. 14 to the procedure of consideration of complaints on violation of human rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Convention; the process of execution of Resolutions of the European Court for Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Court); the new conditions of acceptability of appeals; as well as such innovations as increase of the terms served by judges of the Court; granting to the Commissioner of the Council of Europe for Human Rights the status of the third party in the case; introduction of such category as the “established decisional law of the Court”; and the opportunity of joining to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the EU. Besides, practice of the Court in several, for example, combination of consideration of individual complaints with respect to acceptability and on the merits, which is fixed in Protocol No. 14 is also considered.Influence of the changes fixed in Protocol No. 14 on the efficiency of the Court activity, including the efficiency of solving such problems as availability of the Court for applicants, and, first of all, for private persons, in view of expansion of the circle of the demands raised to complaints, preservation of quality of work of the Court, the growing number of “clone cases” and the measures, which could promote adoption of general measures to decrease the number of “clone cases” by the state-participants of the Convention are being analyzed