PRESS RELEASE 02. 03. 2004

From: ZDF, TIMES, TASR, NEWSWEEK, INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, SCHWARZ, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, FOCUS-R, EFE, ECONOMIST, HBG-DPA, ZEIT DE, DIE WELT, SPIEGEL, BRITSKÉ LISTY, ARD, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AMERICKÉ LISTY, Tuček Jan, Bilek Josef, Hedvicek Ross, Vanek Jiri

PRESS RELEASE

OF THE STRASBOURG COMMITEE

Pilsen, 2. 3. 2004

The Strasbourg Committee has an appointment with the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe Mr. Alvaro Gil-Robles on March 5, 2004. In this coming discussion we are going to bring up the shortcomings and faults in the workings of clerks appointed to the European Court for Human Rights.

While inspecting a few dozens files we discovered that due to faulty work of these clerks, most applications against Czech Republic ended up in the archives of the European Court without being ever submitted to the judges of the Court for evaluation. Employees of the Court, are giving away false informations to the applicants and are misinforming them.

What we found was shocking. No report of the judge rapporteur and no decision of committee of judges about the inadmissibility of the complaint were filed in any of the cases. No complaint of ours was translated into English or French, the official languages of the ECHR. How could anybody expect that the judges could reach a conclusion in any of these cases? We did not obtain a satisfactory answer. Employees either could not or refused to answer and were so arrogant. They told us that the decision about inadmissibility of a complaint is confidential, not available to the appellant.

We are convinced that no judge of the ECHR ever saw our complaints and that complaints of many citizens end up in the archive without being dealt with.

We discovered in 2002 was submited 1.668 applications against Germany and even 2.789 against France and last year number of all applications increased in 13 per cent. We suppose these numbers could be motive for asking about mistakes into European Court. Human rights in Germany and France are saliently distressed too.

The spokesmen of the Strasbourg Committee will answer all press questions after meeting with the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe on the stairs front of the Palais del'Europe in Strasbourg at 2:00 p.m.

Jan R o u b, spokesman Karel B e r k a, spokesman Dalibor P e c h, spokesman