Bulgaria mulls ways to reduce lawsuits for human rights violations

06/08/2008

Bulgaria is paying hundreds of thousands of euros yearly in damages awarded by the European Court of Human Rights.

(The Sofia Echo - 13/06/08; SNA, Mediapool, Dnevnik, Bulgarian Ministry of Justice - 10/06/08; European Court of Human Rights)

Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva has called for urgent measures to reduce the spate of lawsuits alleging Bulgarian human rights violations. [File]

Voicing concern about the increase in the number of applications filed with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Bulgaria in recent years, Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva has called for urgent measures to counter the alarming tendency.

Bulgaria has paid over 950,000 euros in damages awarded by the Strasbourg-based court since 1999, and another 76,000 euros under friendly settlements, Tacheva said at a roundtable in Sofia earlier this summer. There were 1,835 pending cases against Bulgaria at the end of 2007, and the number of new cases referred to her ministry during that year alone reached 127. If the current tendency persists, the number will further increase this year, she warned.

The main goal is to reduce the volume of basic rights violations that trigger the applications before the ECHR, Tacheva said. She also urged measures to bring national legislation fully in line with the European Convention on Human Rights, under which the Strasbourg court was established.

According to the ECHR's annual report for 2007, the total number of judgments against Bulgaria last year was 53, with 51 covering at least one violation. The most frequent violations were of the right to liberty and security (19), the right to timely proceedings (19) and the right to an effective remedy (17).

The federal budget -- that is, taxpayers' money -- covers compensations awarded under ECHR judgments.

Speaking at the roundtable, attended by representatives of the government, parliament, the judiciary, the academia and NGOs, Tacheva called for legislative changes to allow the dismissal of magistrates whose rulings prompt human rights lawsuits against Bulgaria in Strasbourg.

She asked a task force of experts to develop a strategy for overcoming the reasons for the ECHR judgments against Bulgaria and solving the problems arising from them.

The idea is to ensure a mechanism for people to receive compensation for damages they have suffered without having to go to the Strasbourg court, she said. This would also make the process much swifter, as applications currently under consideration by the ECHR date back to 1998, Tacheva added.

According to ECHR statistics on the 2007 court's caseload, Bulgaria's 1,835 pending cases place it 11th among the 47 members of the Council of Europe and signatories of the human rights convention. The countries with the largest numbers of pending cases are Russia (20,296), Turkey (9,173) and Romania (8,275). They fare much better, however, than Bulgaria on a per capita basis when one compares the numbers of applications against them that went to an ECHR decision body in 2007.