The European Convention on Human Rights is an international treaty which only member States of the Council of Europe may sign. The Convention protects, in particular, the right to life, the right to a fair hearing in civil and criminal matters, the right to feedom, the right to respect for private and family life, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the right to an effective remedy, the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions, and many others. The Convention also prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary and unlawful detention, discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention, expulsion or denial of entry by a State in respect of its own nationals, the death penalty; and the collective expulsion of aliens. 

If the Court finds that there has been a violation, it may award you “just satisfaction”, a sum of money in compensation for certain forms of damage. The Court may also require the State concerned to refund the expenses you have incurred in presenting your case. After this, you should be able to ask for the reopening of the domestic proceedings which would in principle constitute the most appropriate form of redress.

If the Court finds that there has been no violation, you will not have to pay any additional costs (such as those incurred by the respondent State). 

You must first exhaust all available domestic legal remedies in your country (e.g. appealing to the highest possible courts like Supreme Court and/or Constitutional Court) and the substance of the violation must have been raised in domestic proceedings.

There is a time limit, and it’s four months since you have received the final decision.

Your application must concern a violation of a specific right in the Convention that directly and significantly affected you and you must have suffered a significant disadvantage.

The application can be filed only by filling out official application form in your own language. Initially you don’t need a lawyer when submitting an application, but at later stages of the procedures, if the Court accepts to decide on your application, you will be invited to hire a lawyer and it becomes mandatory at that point (so better have one from the beginning). 

The application must include a brief summary of the facts and your complaints, an indication of the Convention rights you think have been violated, the remedies you have already used, copies of the decisions given in your case by all the public authorities concerned (these documents will not be returned to you, so only copies should be sent) and your signature as the applicant, and also your representative’s signature. 

Interim measures are urgent actions ordered by the Court under Rule 39 of it’s Rules of the Court. They are supposed to prevent irreparable harm to an applicant while their case is pending before the Court. These measures are exceptional and they are applied only in specific circumstances. 

They are most commonly applied in extradition cases to halt extradition to countries where applicant risks torture, death, inhuman treatment, lack of medical care etc. 

You may lodge an application with the Court if you consider that you have personally and directly been the victim of a violation of the rights and guarantees set out in the Convention by the courts on national level in your own state, or in the state where you have been sentenced (the state against which you are filing an application must be a party to the Convention).

Lately, most of the criminal cases, among many different jurisdictions, are based on “evidences” collected through international cooperation in criminal matters. This means that the substance of the case, especially the question of the admissibility od these kind of evidences, can only be challenged effectively through international cooperation of criminal defence lawyers. With our team bringing together some of Europe’s top criminal defence attorneys, each offering specialized expertise and the ability to act across borders, we believe we are well-prepared for the future of bringing criminal cases to Strasbourg Court.