The European Court of Human Rights’ Use of Standard-Setting Council of Europe Documents

In many judgments, the European Court of Human Rights (Court) lists relevant international materials and sometimes uses these documents when determining whether the European Convention on Human Rights has been violated. These materials are often standard-setting documents that originate in the Council of Europe, the Court’s organisational framework. This article analyses the Court’s practice of using such documents, based on a sample of 795 judgments. The analysis serves to provide an answer to the questions of how and why the Court refers to and relies on these documents. More specifically, the article describes the number of judgments and the importance of the judgments in which the Court cites a CoE document, as well as the type of organs and the different documents cited. The analysis continues with a description of the part of the Court’s judgments in which its determination of the question of compliance with the standards in the CoE documents appears and also considers the purposes for which the Court seems to use the materials. Lastly, insight is provided into the relevance of the CoE documents to the Court’s reasoning and explanations are given as to why the Court does (not) follow the standards formulated in a document