Europees Hof van de Rechten van de Mens gaat webcasts gebruiken en lijst hangende zaken bijhouden (en)
Press Release - 444(2007)
25.06.2007
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Press release issued by the Registrar
Launch of webcasting and new information about pending Court cases
The European Court of Human Rights has today announced the launch of two initiatives: web-casting its public hearings and the provision of new information about pending cases on its website.
At a press conference held in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, the Court's President Jean-Paul Costa and Irish Ambassador to the Council of Europe James Sharkey gave journalists a preview of a future webcast which will enable journalists and the public to view the Court's hearings from anywhere in the world and to download extracts of interest.
In launching the project the Court's President Jean-Paul Costa described webcasting - which has been financed by the Irish Government - as "a significant step forward in making the Court's activities more visible and accessible".
He said: "Lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens, many of whom would never have been able to come to Strasbourg to attend a hearing, will be able to follow the proceedings from their homes and offices. They will be able to see and hear for themselves the arguments advanced for and against a finding of a human rights violation in respect of some of the most sensitive issues of the day. This will bring the Convention closer to the ordinary citizens whom it is intended to serve and protect."
The first hearing to be broadcast on the Court's Internet site (www.echr.coe.int) will be in the case Maumousseau and Washington v. France 1 on 28 June 2007. The hearing will be held at 9a.m. and the webcast will be made available on the Court's website from 2.30 p.m. that day.
The second important initiative concerns the provision of information about pending cases on the Court's site. As from today, a report (accessible through "Pending cases", "Press" and the Court's database HUDOC) will appear on the Court's Internet site every Monday, giving a list of cases which have been officially communicated to the Government of the country against which the applicant's complaints are directed. For each case there will be a link to a summary of the facts, the applicants' complaints and the questions put by the Court to the parties. This information will be in one of the Court's official languages, English or French.
Communication is the first important stage in the progress of a case; most cases which have been communicated will result in a judgment. In 2006 the Court communicated some 3,200 applications to Governments, many of which were routine or repetitive. The published list will contain only those cases which are considered by the Court to be of greater interest. A case will appear on the list on the third Monday after the week in which the decision to communicate it was taken.
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Press contacts
Emma Hellyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15)
Stéphanie Klein (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54)
Beverley Jacobs (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 21)
Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30)
The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.
1 The case concerns an application brought by a French national, Sophie Maumousseau, in respect of a decision by the French courts to return her daughter, Charlotte Washington, to her father, a US national living in the USA. In 2003, with her husband's consent, the mother had taken the child, then aged three, to France for a holiday. However, she later refused to return with her daughter to the US despite repeated requests from her husband. The father brought proceedings under the 1980 Hague Convention, which culminated in a decision by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal in May 2004 ordering that the child be returned to her father. On 4 December 2004 the child left France for the US.