60 years after its adoption, the European Convention on Human Rights remains the reference text about human rights and liberties in Greater Europe.
Since 1950, the Convention has been amended and supplemented by additional protocols in order to adapt to the evolution of the needs and developments of the European society.
The control mechanism set up by the Convention in 1950 was deeply reformed in 1994 with the adoption of Protocol No. 11. The Protocol, which entered into force on 1 November 1998, set up a new full-time Court, to which all individual applicants are now entitled to refer their cases directly.
In 2004, the urgent need has arisen to adjust this mechanism, and particularly to guarantee the long-term effectiveness of the European Court of Human Rights, so that it can continue to play its pre-eminent role in protecting human rights in Europe.
Protocol No. 14, which entered into force on 1 June 2010, optimizes the filtering and processing of application. It envisages, among other measures, the creation of new judicial formations for the simplest cases, a new admissibility criterion (the existence of ”significant disadvantage”) and introduces a nine-year non-renewable term of office for judges.
Download the Convention (2010)
Download the Convention as amended by Protocols Nos. 11 and 14 (30 linguistic versions)
