The Convention’s Preamble will also feature a reference to the principle of subsidiarity and the doctrine of “the margin of appreciation”. Another change will be made in the wording of an article which sets out the conditions of the Court’s dismissal of an application based on the absence of a significant damage on the part of the applicant.
Amendments to the Convention introduced by Protocol 15 were agreed during the high-level conference held in Brighton in April 2012. They will enter into force upon signing by all member states of the Council of Europe.
On the day the new Protocol was opened for signature, a number of non-governmental organisations, including the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, published a joint statement. The organisations emphasise that the adoption of the Protocol should not result in lowering the level of human rights protection.
Already during the negotiations of the Protocol, the organisations expressed their concerns over the shortening of the time limit for lodging an application to the ECtHR and, more importantly, the incorporation to the Preamble of principles developed in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
Originally, the principle of subsidiarity and doctrine of the margin of appreciation were to be included into the very text of the Convention. Ultimately, the participants of the Brighton Conference agreed that the relevant modifications would be made only into the Preamble of the Convention.
However, the NGOs remain critical to the proposed amendments. In the statement, the organisations underscore that the principle of subsidiarity and doctrine of the margin of appreciation should be interpreted in the light of the Strasbourg Court’s jurisprudence and cannot be used too extensively. As regards the doctrine of the margin of appreciation which enable the ECtHR to interpret convention provisions differently for different member states of the Council of Europe, the statement’s signatories emphasise that it is the Court, and not the states, that decides what margin can be afforded to states, if any.
The NGOs also criticise the shortening of the time limit for lodging an application. They argue that the shorter time limit may drastically restrict the right to individual petition, especially for applicants deprived of access to legal assistance and new technologies which facilitate the process of drafting the complaint.
