EU: The European Court of Human Rights faces a thorough overhaul aimed at cutting a backlog of 80,000 cases and ensuring that new cases are processed more quickly.
Leaders from 46 European countries agreed in Warsaw yesterday to strengthen national measures to prevent violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, to ensure that national laws and administrative practice are fully compatible with the convention and to improve human rights law training for lawyers.
The Council of Europe summit also agreed to appoint a panel of eminent persons to consider far-reaching reforms to the court's workings, including the introduction of a filtering system to determine more quickly which cases are most important.
The Taoiseach told the summit that reform of the court, which received 45,000 new cases last year, was essential if it was to fulfil its role as a human rights guardian for citizens throughout the continent.
Mr Ahern said later that it could become necessary to introduce filtering systems at the national level as well as at the court itself, even if this impeded the direct access all European citizens have to the court.
"It seems to me we need some filtering process by member states and by the Court itself . . . It would be a pity if a person loses what they believe to be that direct access, but equally, if you take any court and you put 45,000 cases onto it, I don't think anybody would be getting access except a small number of cases."
The summit, only the third in the Council of Europe's 56-year history, adopted a Warsaw Declaration pledging to build "a Europe without dividing lines" based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The leaders promised to streamline the work of the organisation, which includes every country in Europe apart from Belarus, and to engage with new challenges, such as the fight against terrorism and organised crime.
"We can now focus on these challenges and continue to build a united Europe, based on our common values and on shared interests, by strengthening co-operation and solidarity between member states. We will remain open to co-operation with Europe's neighbouring regions and the rest of the world," the declaration said.
The leaders approved an action plan to improve the council's activities and nominated Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, to produce a report on the relationship between the Council of Europe and the European Union.
The organisation hopes to draft a memorandum of understanding with the EU, based on a set of guidelines that include closer political and legal co-operation and greater complementarity between EU and Council of Europe legal texts.
If the EU constitution comes into force, the EU will accede as a body to the European Convention on Human Rights, but the guidelines approved yesterday also envisage the EU transposing those aspects of Council of Europe Conventions that fall within its competence into EU law.
The EU External Relations Commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, told the summit that the EU already worked closely with the Council of Europe in the context of enlargement and the Neighbourhood Policy governing EU relations with countries such as Ukraine.
Ms Ferrero-Waldner promised that the EU's planned Human Rights Agency would be designed to ensure that it is not in conflict with the human rights work of the Council of Europe.