TheConvention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (commonly known as theEuropean Convention on Human Rights orECHR) is asupranational international treaty designed to protecthuman rights andpolitical freedoms throughoutEurope. It was opened for signature on 4 November 1950 by the member states of the newly formedCouncil of Europe[1] and entered into force on 3 September 1953. AllCouncil of Europe member states are parties to the Convention, and any new member is required to ratify it at the earliest opportunity.[2]
To guarantee this judicial enforcement, the Convention established both theCommittee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and the ECtHR, which has sat inStrasbourg since its creation in 1959. Any person who believes their rights under the Convention have been violated by a state party can bring a case before the Court, provided their state allows it under Article 56 of the Convention. Judgments finding violations are binding on the states concerned, which are obliged to comply, particularly by paying appropriate compensation to applicants for any damage suffered. The Committee of Ministers supervises the execution of judgments.
The ECtHR has defined the Convention as aliving instrument,[3] meaning it must be interpreted in light of present-day conditions. This evolving case law can restrict themargin of appreciation left to states or create new rights derived from existing provisions.
Since its adoption, the Convention has been amended by seventeen additionalprotocols, which have added new rights or extended existing ones.[4] These include the right to property, the right to education, the right to free elections, the prohibition of imprisonment for debt, the right to freedom of movement, the ban on expelling nationals, the prohibition of collective expulsion of aliens, the abolition of thedeath penalty, procedural safeguards for the expulsion of lawfully residing foreigners, the right to adouble degree of jurisdiction in criminal matters, the right to compensation for wrongful conviction, thene bis in idem principle (not to be tried or punished twice for the same offence), equality between spouses, and a general prohibition of discrimination.
The most recent version entered into force on 1 August 2021 throughProtocol No. 15, which added theprinciple of subsidiarity to the preamble. This principle reaffirms that states parties have the primary responsibility to secure and remedy human rights violations at national level.
The European Convention on Human Rights is widely considered the most effective international treaty for the protection of human rights and has had a significant influence on the domestic law of all Council of Europe member states.[5][6]
Ukrainian stamp, commemorating 60 years of the European Convention on Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights has played an important role in the development and awareness ofhuman rights in Europe. The development of a regional system of human rights protections operating across Europe can be seen as a direct response to twin concerns. First, in the aftermath of theSecond World War, the convention, drawing on the inspiration of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, can be seen as part of a wider response from theAllied powers in delivering a human rights agenda to prevent the most serious human rights violations which had occurred during the Second World War from happening again.[7]
Second, the convention was a response to the growth ofStalinism inCentral andEastern Europe and was designed to protect the member states of theCouncil of Europe fromcommunist subversion.[8] This, in part, explains the constant references to values and principles that are "necessary in a democratic society" throughout the convention, despite the fact that such principles are not in any way defined within the convention itself.[7] Consequently, the convention was principally conceived, at the time of its creation, as an "anti-totalitarian" measure to help stabilise social democracies in Western Europe, rather than as a specific reaction to the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust. This approach was a continuation of Atlanticist beliefs from World War II and the early Cold War which called for the defence of democracy against all forms of authoritarianism.[9]
From 7 to 10 May 1948, politicians includingWinston Churchill,François Mitterrand, andKonrad Adenauer, as well as civil society representatives, academics, business leaders, trade unionists, and religious leaders convened theCongress of Europe inThe Hague. At the end of the Congress, a declaration and following pledge to create the convention was issued. The second and third articles of the pledge state: "We desire a Charter of Human Rights guaranteeing liberty of thought, assembly and expression as well as right to form a political opposition. We desire a Court of Justice with adequate sanctions for the implementation of this Charter."[10]
The convention was drafted as one the first and most important tasks of the newly-formedCouncil of Europe. Over 100 parliamentarians from the then-twelve member states of the Council gathered in Strasbourg in the summer of 1949 for the first-ever meeting of the Council's Consultative Assembly to draft the "charter of human rights" announced at the Hague, and to establish a court to enforce it. British MP and lawyer SirDavid Maxwell-Fyfe, the chair of the Assembly's Committee on Legal and Administrative Questions, was one of its leading members and guided the drafting of the convention, based on an earlier draft produced by theEuropean Movement. As a prosecutor at theNuremberg Trials, he had seen first-hand the power of international justice.
French former minister and French Resistance fighterPierre-Henri Teitgen submitted a report[11] to the Assembly proposing a list of rights to be protected, selecting a number from theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights that had recently been agreed to in New York, and defining how the enforcing judicial mechanism might operate. After extensive debates,[12] the Assembly sent its final proposal[13] to the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, which convened a group of experts to draft the convention itself.
The convention was designed to incorporate a traditionalcivil liberties approach to securing "effective political democracy", from the strongest traditions in the United Kingdom, France and other member states of the fledgling Council of Europe, as said byGuido Raimondi, President of theEuropean Court of Human Rights:
The European system of protection of human rights with its Court would be inconceivable untied from democracy. In fact, we have a bond that is not only regional or geographic: a State cannot be party to the European Convention on Human Rights if it is not a member of the Council of Europe; it cannot be a member State of the Council of Europe if it does not respect pluralist democracy, the rule of law and human rights. So a non-democratic State could not participate in the ECHR system: the protection of democracy goes hand in hand with the protection of rights.
The convention was opened for signature on 4 November 1950 in Rome. It was ratified and entered into force on 3 September 1953. It is overseen and enforced by theEuropean Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and theCouncil of Europe. Until procedural reforms in the late 1990s, the convention was also overseen by aEuropean Commission on Human Rights.
Proposals for reform of the convention have been put forward, for example by former UK Prime MinisterRishi Sunak,[15] and other UK politicians.[16]Conservative politicians have proposed reform or withdrawal from the convention during the2024 Conservative Party leadership election.[17] After the September 2025British cabinet reshuffle Labour Party officials said other member countries wanted Britain to play a leading role in reforming the convention, while opposition partyReform UK pledged to leave the ECHR to have free hand in deporting migrants.[18]. It has been argued by many academics and most recently the then-Justice Secretary,Shabana Mahmood that rather than the Convention being the issue, it is rather the way in which the UK interprets the Convention domestically which tends to be more strict than most other State Parties.[19]
As of 2025, there are 46 countries that are parties to the Convention. From 1996 until 2022, Russia was also party to the Convention, but was expelled after Russia's full-scale invasion of, and war in Ukraine.
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The convention is drafted in broad terms, in a similar (albeit more modern) manner to the 1689 ScottishClaim of Right Act 1689, to the 1689English Bill of Rights, the 1791U.S. Bill of Rights, the 1789 FrenchDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, or the first part of the GermanBasic Law. Statements of principle are, from a juridical point of view, not determinative and require and have given occasion to extensive interpretation by courts to bring out meaning in particular factual situations.[20]
As amended by Protocol 11, the convention consists of three parts. The main rights and freedoms are contained in Section I, which consists of Articles 2 to 18. Section II (Articles 19 to 51) sets up the court and its rules of operation. Section III contains various concluding provisions.
Before the entry into force of Protocol 11, Section II (Article 19) set up the commission and the court, Sections III (Articles 20 to 37) and IV (Articles 38 to 59) included the high-level machinery for the operation of, respectively, the commission and the court, and Section V contained various concluding provisions.
Many of the articles in Section I are structured in two paragraphs: the first sets out a basic right or freedom (such as Article 2(1) – the right to life) but the second contains various exclusions, exceptions or limitations on the basic right (such as Article 2(2) – which excepts certain uses of force leading to death).
Article 1 simply binds the signatory parties to secure the rights under the other articles of the convention "within their jurisdiction". In exceptional cases, "jurisdiction" may not be confined to a contracting state's own national territory; the obligation to secure convention rights then also extends to foreign territories, such as occupied land in which the state exercises effective control.
InLoizidou v Turkey,[21] theEuropean Court of Human Rights ruled that jurisdiction of member states to the convention extended to areas under that state's effective control as a result of military action.
Article 2 protects the right of every person to their life. The right to life extends only to human beings, not to animals,[23] nor to "legal persons" such as corporations.[23] InEvans v United Kingdom, the court ruled that the question of whether the right to life extends to a human embryo fell within a state'smargin of appreciation. InVo v France,[24] the court declined to extend the right to life to an unborn child, while stating that "it is neither desirable, nor even possible as matters stand, to answer in the abstract the question whether the unborn child is a person for the purposes of Article 2 of the Convention".[25]
The court has ruled that states have three main duties under Article 2:
a duty to refrain from unlawful killing,
a duty to investigate suspicious deaths, and
in certain circumstances, a positive duty to prevent foreseeable loss of life.[26]
The first paragraph of the article contains an exception forlawful executions, although this exception has largely been superseded by Protocols 6 and 13.Protocol 6 prohibits the imposition of the death penalty in peacetime, while Protocol 13 extends the prohibition to all circumstances.
The second paragraph of Article 2 provides that death resulting from defending oneself or others, arresting a suspect or fugitive, or suppressing riots or insurrections, will not contravene the Article when the use of force involved is "no more than absolutely necessary".
Signatory states to the convention can only derogate from the rights contained in Article 2 for deaths which result from lawful acts of war.
The European Court of Human Rights did not rule upon the right to life until 1995, when inMcCann and Others v United Kingdom[27] it ruled that the exception contained in the second paragraph does not constitute situations when it is permitted to kill, but situations where it is permitted to use force which might result in the deprivation of life.[28]
Article 3 prohibitstorture and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". There are no exceptions or limitations on this right. This provision usually applies, apart from torture, to cases of severe police violence and poor conditions in detention.
The court has emphasised the fundamental nature of Article 3 in holding that the prohibition is made in "absolute terms ... irrespective of the victim's conduct".[29] The court has also held that states cannot deport orextradite individuals who might be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in the recipient state.[30]
InAksoy v. Turkey (1997) the court found Turkey guilty of torture in 1996 in the case of a detainee who was suspended by his arms while his hands were tied behind his back.[33]
Selmouni v. France (2000) the court has appeared to be more open to finding states guilty of torture ruling that since the convention is a "living instrument", treatment which it had previously characterized as inhuman or degrading treatment might in future be regarded as torture.[34]
In 2014, after new information was uncovered that showed the decision to use the five techniques in Northern Ireland in 1971–1972 had been taken by British ministers,[35] theIrish Government asked the European Court of Human Rights to review its judgement. In 2018, by six votes to one, the court declined.[36]
Article 5 provides that everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. Liberty and security of the person are taken as a "compound" concept – security of the person has not been subject to separate interpretation by the court.
Article 5 provides the right toliberty, subject only to lawful arrest or detention under certain other circumstances, such as arrest on reasonable suspicion of a crime or imprisonment in fulfilment of a sentence. The article also provides those arrested with the right to be informed, in a language they understand, of the reasons for the arrest and any charge they face, the right of prompt access to judicial proceedings to determine the legality of the arrest or detention, to trial within a reasonable time or release pending trial, and the right to compensation in the case of arrest or detention in violation of this article.
The right to afair trial, proclaimed in Article 6, is one of the most invoked by plaintiffs.
Article 6 provides a detailedright to a fair trial, including the right to apublic hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal within reasonable time, thepresumption of innocence, and other minimum rights for those charged with a criminal offence (adequate time and facilities to prepare their defence, access to legal representation, right to examine witnesses against them or have them examined, right to the free assistance of an interpreter).[37]
The majority of convention violations that the court finds today are excessive delays, in violation of the "reasonable time" requirement, in civil and criminal proceedings before national courts, mostly inItaly andFrance. Under the "independent tribunal" requirement, the court has ruled that military judges in Turkish state security courts are incompatible with Article 6. In compliance with this Article, Turkey has now adopted a law abolishing these courts.
Another significant set of violations concerns the "confrontation clause" of Article 6 (i.e. the right to examine witnesses or have them examined). In this respect, problems of compliance with Article 6 may arise when national laws allow the use in evidence of the testimonies of absent, anonymous and vulnerable witnesses.
Othman (Abu Qatada) v. United Kingdom (2012) –Abu Qatada could not be deported to Jordan as that would be a violation of Article 6 "given the real risk of the admission of evidence obtained by torture". This was the first time the court ruled that such an expulsion would be a violation of Article 6.[38]
Article 7 prohibits the retroactive criminalisation of acts and omissions. No person may be punished for an act that was not a criminal offence at the time of its commission. The article states that a criminal offence is one under either national or international law, which would permit a party to prosecute someone for a crime which was not illegal under domestic law at the time, so long as it was prohibited byinternational law. The Article also prohibits a heavier penalty being imposed than was applicable at the time when the criminal act was committed.
Article 8 provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and hiscorrespondence", subject to restrictions that are "in accordance with law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others".[39] This article clearly provides a right to be free of unlawful searches, but the court has given the protection for "private and family life" that this article provides a broad interpretation, taking for instance that prohibition of private consensual homosexual acts violates this article. There have been cases discussing consensual familial sexual relationships, and how the criminalisation of this may violate this article. However, the ECHR still allows such familial sexual acts to be criminal.[40]
This may be compared to the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, which has also adopted a somewhat broad interpretation of theright to privacy. Furthermore, Article 8 sometimes comprisespositive obligations:[41] whereas classical human rights are formulated as prohibiting a state from interfering with rights, and thusnot to do something (e.g. not to separate a family under family life protection), the effective enjoyment of such rights may also include an obligation for the state to become active, and todo something (e.g. to enforce access for a divorced parent to his/her child).
Article 9 provides a right tofreedom of thought, conscience andreligion. This includes the freedom to change a religion or belief, and to manifest a religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society".
Article 10 provides the right tofreedom of expression, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society". This right includes the freedom to hold opinions, and to receive and impart information and ideas, but allows restrictions for:
interests of national security
territorial integrity or public safety
prevention of disorder or crime
protection of health or morals
protection of the reputation or the rights of others
preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence
maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary
The Observer and The Guardian v. United Kingdom (1991) 14 EHRR 153, the "Spycatcher" case.
Bowman v. United Kingdom [1998]ECHR 4, (1998) 26 EHRR 1, distributing vast quantities of anti-abortion material in contravention of election spending laws
Communist Party v. Turkey (1998) 26 EHRR 1211
Appleby v. United Kingdom (2003) 37 EHRR 38, protests in a private shopping centre
Article 11 protects the right tofreedom of assembly and association, including the right to formtrade unions, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society".
Article 12 provides a right for women and men ofmarriageable age tomarry and establish a family.
Despite a number of invitations, the court has so far refused to apply the protections of this article tosame-sex marriage. The court has defended this on the grounds that the article was intended to apply only to different-sex marriage, and that a wide margin of appreciation must be granted to parties in this area.
InGoodwin v. United Kingdom the court ruled that a law which still classified post-operativetranssexual people under their birth sex violated article 12 as it meant that transsexual people were unable to marry individuals of the opposite sex. This reversed an earlier ruling inRees v. United Kingdom. This did not, however, alter the Court's understanding that Article 12 protects only different-sex couples.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled inSchalk and Kopf v. Austria that countries are not required to provide marriage licenses for same-sex couples; however, if a country allows same-sex couple marriage it must be done under the same conditions that opposite-sex couples marriage face,[44] in order to prevent a breach of article 14 – the prohibition of discrimination. Additionally, the court ruled in the 2015 case ofOliari and Others v. Italy that states have a positive obligation to ensure there is a specific legal framework for the recognition and protection of same-sex couples.
Article 13 provides for theright for an effective remedy before national authorities for violations of rights under the convention. The inability to obtain aremedy before a national court for an infringement of a Convention right is thus a free-standing and separately actionable infringement of the convention.
Article 14 contains a prohibition ofdiscrimination. This prohibition is broad in some ways and narrow in others. It is broad in that it prohibits discrimination under a potentially unlimited number of grounds. While the article specifically prohibits discrimination based on "sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status", the last of these allows the court to extend to Article 14 protection to other grounds not specifically mentioned such as has been done regarding discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.
At the same time, the article's protection is limited in that it only prohibits discrimination with respect to rights under the convention. Thus, an applicant must prove discrimination in the enjoyment of a specific right that is guaranteed elsewhere in the convention (e.g. discrimination based on sex – Article 14 – in the enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression – Article 10).[40]
Protocol 12 extends this prohibition to cover discrimination in any legal right, even when that legal right is not protected under the convention, so long as it is provided for in national law.
Article 15 allows contracting states toderogate from certain rights guaranteed by the convention in a time of "war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation". Permissible derogations under article 15 must meet three substantive conditions:
there must be a public emergency threatening the life of the nation;
any measures taken in response must be "strictly required by the exigencies of the situation"; and
the measures taken in response to it must be in compliance with a state's other obligations under international law.
In addition to these substantive requirements, the derogation must be procedurally sound. There must be some formal announcement of the derogation and notice of the derogation and any measures adopted under it, and the ending of the derogation must be communicated to theSecretary-General of the Council of Europe.[45]
As of 2016, only eight member states had ever invoked derogations.[46] The court is quite permissive in accepting a state's derogations from the convention but applies a higher degree of scrutiny in deciding whether measures taken by states under a derogation are, in the words of Article 15, "strictly required by the exigencies of the situation". Thus inA v United Kingdom, the court dismissed a claim that a derogation lodged by the British government in response to theSeptember 11 attacks was invalid, but went on to find that measures taken by the United Kingdom under that derogation were disproportionate.[47]
Examples of such derogations include:
In the 1969Greek case, theEuropean Commission of Human Rights ruled that the derogation was invalid because the alleged Communist subversion did not pose a sufficient threat.[48] This is the only time to date that the convention system has rejected an attempted derogation.[49]
Operation Demetrius—Internees arrested without trial pursuant to "Operation Demetrius" could not complain to theEuropean Commission of Human Rights about breaches of Article 5 because on 27 June 1957, the UK lodged a notice with the Council of Europe declaring that there was a "public emergency within the meaning of Article 15(1) of the Convention".[50]
Article 16 allows states to restrict the political activity of foreigners. The court has ruled that European Union member states cannot consider the nationals of other member states to be aliens.[51]
Article 17 provides that no one may use the rights guaranteed by the convention to seek the abolition or limitation of rights guaranteed in the convention. This addresses instances where states seek to restrict a human right in the name of another human right, or where individuals rely on a human right to undermine other human rights (for example where an individual issues a death threat).
Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany (1957), the Commission refused to consider the appeal by theCommunist Party of Germany, stating that the communist doctrine advocated by them is incompatible with the convention, citing article 17's limitations on the rights to the extent necessarily to prevent their subversion by adherents of a totalitarian doctrine.[52]
Article 18 provides that any limitations on the rights provided for in the convention may be used only for the purpose for which they are provided. For example, Article 5, which guarantees the right to personal freedom, may be explicitly limited in order to bring a suspect before a judge. To use pre-trial detention as a means of intimidation of a person under a false pretext is, therefore, a limitation of right (to freedom) which does not serve an explicitly provided purpose (to be brought before a judge), and is therefore contrary to Article 18.
As of July 2025[update], seventeen protocols to the convention have been opened for signature. These can be divided into two main groups: those amending the framework of the convention system, and those expanding the rights that can be protected. The former require unanimous ratification by member states before coming into force, while the latter require a certain number of states to sign before coming into force.
This Protocol contains three different rights which the signatories could not agree to place in the convention itself.[53]Monaco andSwitzerland have signed but never ratified Protocol 1.[54]
Article 1 ("A1P1")[55] provides that "every natural orlegal person is entitled to thepeaceful enjoyment of his possessions". TheEuropean Court of Human Rights acknowledged a violation of the fair balance between the demands of the general interest of the community and the requirements of the protection of the individual's fundamental rights, also, in the uncertainty – for the owner – about the future of the property, and in the absence of an allowance.[56]
In the case ofMifsud and others v Malta (38770/17) the Maltese state was found to have violated Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the convention. The case involved a plot of land owned by the Mifsud family and their heirs which was expropriated twice (in 1984 and in 2012). The court, in its judgment, stated that
the [Maltese] Constitutional Court had no basis on which to ground its finding. The Court is disconcerted by the circumstances of the present case which led to an expropriation of property being endorsed without anyone being able to assert the reasons behind such an expropriation.[57]
Article 2 provides for the right not to be denied an education and theright for parents to have their children educated in accordance with their religious and other views. It does not however guarantee any particular level of education of any particular quality.[59]
Although phrased in the Protocol as a negative right, inŞahin v. Turkey the court ruled that:
it would be hard to imagine that institutions of higher education existing at a given time do not come within the scope of the first sentence of Article 2 of Protocol No 1. Although that Article does not impose a duty on the Contracting States to set up institutions of higher education, any State doing so will be under an obligation to afford an effective right of access to them. In a democratic society, the right to education, which is indispensable to the furtherance of human rights, plays such a fundamental role that a restrictive interpretation of the first sentence of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 would not be consistent with the aim or purpose of that provision.[60]
Article 1 prohibits the imprisonment of people for inability to fulfil a contract. Article 2 provides for aright to freely move within a country once lawfully there and for a right to leave any country. Article 3 prohibits the expulsion of nationals and provides for the right of an individual to enter a country of their nationality. Article 4 prohibits the collective expulsion of foreigners.[62]
The United Kingdom's failure to ratify this protocol is due to concerns over the interaction of Article 2 and Article 3 withBritish nationality law. Specifically, several classes of "British national" (such asBritish National (Overseas)) do not have the right of abode in the United Kingdom and are subject to immigration control there. In 2009, the UK government stated that it had no plans to ratify Protocol 4 because of concerns that those articles could be taken as conferring that right.[64]
Despite having signed the protocol more than thirty years ago Germany and the Netherlands have never ratified it. Turkey, which signed the protocol in 1985, ratified it in 2016, becoming the latest member state to do so. The United Kingdom has neither signed nor ratified the protocol.[66]
Protocol 12 applies the current expansive and indefinite grounds of prohibited discrimination inArticle 14 to the exercise of any legal right and to the actions (including the obligations) of public authorities. The additional scope of the Protocol covers four categories of cases:[67]
Cases where a person is subjected to discrimination in the enjoyment of any right specifically conferred upon the individual by national law (and not solely rights provided under the Convention);
Cases where a person is subjected to discrimination in the enjoyment of any right arising from clear obligations imposed upon public authorities under national law (where such authorities are legally obliged to act in a particular manner);
Cases involving discrimination by public authorities in the exercise of discretionary powers (such as grants or subsidies);
Cases involving discrimination resulting from other acts or omissions by public authorities (for instance, the conduct of law enforcement officials in quelling a riot).
The United Kingdom government has declined to sign Protocol 12 on the basis that they believe the wording of protocol is too wide and would result in a flood of new cases testing the extent of the new provision. They believe that the phrase "rights set forth by law" might include international conventions to which the UK is not a party, and would result in incorporation of these instruments by stealth.[69]
It has been suggested that the protocol is therefore in acatch-22, since the UK will decline to either sign or ratify the protocol until theEuropean Court of Human Rights has addressed the meaning of the provision, while the court is hindered in doing so by the lack of applications to the court concerning the protocol caused by the decisions of Europe's most populous states—including the UK—not to ratify the protocol. The UK government, nevertheless, stated in 2004 that it "agrees in principle that the ECHR should contain a provision against discrimination that is free-standing and not parasitic on the other Convention rights".[69] The first judgment that found a violation of Protocol No. 12,Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, was delivered in 2009.
Protocol 13 provides for the total abolition of thedeath penalty.[70] Currently all Council of Europe member states butAzerbaijan have ratified Protocol 13.[71]
However, account must be taken of the position of the Court, which in practice has regarded the Convention as prohibiting the death penalty. In its 2010 judgment inAl-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. the United Kingdom, the Court held that Article 2 and Article 3 of the Convention prohibits the death penalty, owing to the general trend towards its abolition among the States Parties to the Convention.[72] This prohibition applies to all States Parties to the Convention, including those which have not ratified Protocol 13.
Accordingly, the ratification of this Protocol is now essentially symbolic: it demonstrates a State Party’s voluntary commitment to the abolitionist trend in Europe, without constituting an obligation to which it is compelled to adhere.
Protocol 16 was adopted on 2 October 2013 and entered into force on 1 August 2018.[73] It allows the highest national courts of ratifying States to request non-bindingadvisory opinions from the Court on questions of principle concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention. The purpose of this Protocol is to foster dialogue between courts and to strengthen the ‘constitutional’ role of the Court.[74]
Only courts designated as the “highest” by each State can submit requests, which must relate to a pending domestic case and raise a question of principle. If the request is accepted by a five-judge panel, the Grand Chamber delivers the opinion; the national judge sits ex officio.
Advisory opinions are formally non-binding under Article 5 of the Protocol,[75] but they carry strong persuasive weight in national proceedings and are generally followed by the Strasbourg Court in later cases.
Since its entry into force, the Court has received eleven requests and issued seven opinions.[76][77] Topics addressed include surrogacy and recognition of parenthood (France),[78] defamation and double jeopardy (Armenia)[79] and adult adoption (Finland).[80]
As of July 2025, twenty-five States have ratified the Protocol and four more have signed it without ratifying it.[81]
Summary of ratifications of the substantive additional protocols
The convention's provisions affecting institutional and procedural matters have been altered several times by means of protocols. These amendments have, with the exception of Protocol 2, amended the text of the convention. Protocol 2 did not amend the text of the convention as such but stipulated that it was to be treated as an integral part of the text. All of these protocols have required the unanimous ratification of all the member states of the Council of Europe to enter into force.
Protocols 2, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10 have now been superseded by Protocol 11 which entered into force on 1 November 1998.[83] It established a fundamental change in the machinery of the convention. It abolished the commission, allowing individuals to apply directly to the court, which was given compulsory jurisdiction and altered the latter's structure. Previously states could ratify the convention without accepting the jurisdiction of the Court of Human Rights. The protocol also abolished the judicial functions of the Committee of Ministers.
Protocol 14 follows on from Protocol 11 in proposing to further improve the efficiency of the court. It seeks to "filter" out cases that have less chance of succeeding along with those that are broadly similar to cases brought previously against the same member state. Furthermore, a case will not be considered admissible where an applicant has not suffered a "significant disadvantage". This latter ground can only be used when an examination of the application on the merits is not considered necessary and where the subject-matter of the application had already been considered by a national court.
A new mechanism was introduced by Protocol 14 to assist enforcement of judgements by the Committee of Ministers. The committee can ask the court for an interpretation of a judgement and can even bring a member state before the court for non-compliance of a previous judgement against that state. Protocol 14 also allows forEuropean Union accession to the convention.[84] The protocol has been ratified by every Council of Europe member state, Russia being last in February 2010. It entered into force on 1 June 2010.[85]
A provisionalProtocol 14bis had been opened for signature in 2009.[65] Pending the ratification of Protocol 14 itself, 14bis was devised to allow the court to implement revised procedures in respect of the states which have ratified it. It allowed single judges to reject manifestly inadmissible applications made against the states that have ratified the protocol. It also extended the competence of three-judge chambers to declare applications made against those states admissible and to decide on their merits where there already is a well-established case law of the court. Now that all Council of Europe member states have ratified Protocol 14, Protocol 14bis has lost itsraison d'être and according to its own terms ceased to have any effect when Protocol 14 entered into force on 1 June 2010.
Protocol 15, opened for signature by the States Parties on 24 June 2013 and entered into force on 1 August 2021, amends the Convention by introducing a reference to the principle of subsidiarity and to the margin of appreciation left to national judges in the interpretation of the Convention.[86] With Protocol 15, the time limit for lodging an application with the Court is reduced from six to four months from the date of the final national decision. In addition, judges are no longer eligible for election after the age of 65, which allows them to complete a full term of office. Finally, the Court may declare an application inadmissible even if the case has not been examined by a domestic court.
^Andreadakis, S. (2013)."The European Convention on Human Rights, the EU and the UK: Confronting a Heresy: A Reply to Andrew Williams".European Journal of International Law.24 (4):1187–1193.doi:10.1093/ejil/cht063.Five decades later, it is undisputed that the ECHR has been successful in carrying out its mission, judging from its influence on the laws and social realities of the contracting parties, the extensive jurisprudence in the field of the protection of human rights, as well as the remarkable compliance with the ECtHR's judgments.
^Iriye, Akira, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock, eds. The human rights revolution: an international history. Vol. 3. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp 63-64
^Riley-Smith, Ben (28 September 2024)."Robert Jenrick: Kemi's ECHR plan is just fantasy".The Telegraph.Archived from the original on 30 September 2024. Retrieved30 September 2024.Mr Jenrick is the only one of the four candidates explicitly proposing to pull the UK out of the ECHR. Others have not ruled it out but called for a wider overhaul of migration policy before that is considered.
^abKorff, Douwe (November 2006). "The Right to Life: A Guide to the Implementation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights".Human Rights Handbook No. 8. Council of Europe. p. 10
^Dickson, Brice (2010).The European Convention on Human Rights and the Conflict in Northern Ireland. Oxford University Press. p. 139.ISBN978-0-19-957138-3.
^Ergec, Rusen (2015). "À Propos de "Les Organes du Conseil de l'Europe et le Concept de Démocratie dans le Cadre de Deux Affaires Grecques" de Pierre Mertens: Le Conseil de l'Europe et la Démocratie dans les Circonstances Exceptionnelles".Revue belge de Droit international (in French) (1–2):204–217.ISSN2566-1906.
^"Case of Al-Saadoon and Mufdhu v. The United Kingdom" (Judgment). 2 March 2010. p. 120. Retrieved5 July 2025.All but two of the member States have now signed Protocol No. 13 and all but three of the States which have signed it have ratified it. These figures, together with consistent State practice in observing the moratorium on capital punishment, are strongly indicative that Article 2 has been amended so as to prohibit the death penalty in all circumstances. Against this background, the Court does not consider that the wording of the second sentence of Article 2 § 1 continues to act as a bar to its interpreting the words "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in Article 3 as including the death penalty.
^"Explanatory Report to Protocol No. 16 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms".Council of Europe. Retrieved5 July 2025.The Group of Wise Persons concluded that "it would be useful to introduce a system under which the national courts could apply to the Court for advisory opinions on legal questions relating to interpretation of the Convention and the protocols thereto, in order to foster dialogue between courts and enhance the Court's 'constitutional' role.
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Schabas, William A. (2015).The European Convention on Human Rights: A Commentary. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-106676-4.
Xenos, Dimitris (2012).The Positive Obligations of the State under the European Convention of Human Rights. Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-66812-5.
Kälin W., Künzli J. (2019). The Law of International Human Rights Protection.ISBN978-0-19-882568-5.
David Harris, Michael O'Boyle, Ed Bates, and Carla M. Buckley (2023).Harris, O'Boyle, and Warbrick: Law of the European Convention on Human Rights. Fifth edition. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-886200-0.
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