In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recorded 814 applications against the Republic of Moldova, by 7.4% more compared with 2017, when there were logged 758 applications. The Republic of Moldova is ranked 11th out of 47 states by the number of applications examined by the ECHR and fifth by the number of people who go to the ECHR. The figures were presented by the Legal Resources Center at press conference at IPN on January 25.

The Center’s legal adviser Daniel Goinic said no improvement in the observance of human rights was witnessed in the Republic of Moldova in 2018. Compared with the size of the country’s population, the Moldovans went to the ECHR 2.5 times more often than the Europeans, on average. Last year the ECHR passed 33 judgments on Moldova, by 17 more than in 2017.

Since 1998 until 2018, the ECHR recorded over 14,200 applications against Moldova and passed 387 judgments. On December 31, 2018, 1,204 applications were pending. Of these, more than 1,000 applications have big chances of winning, stated Daniel Goinic, noting this is almost thrice more than the current figure.

In the 33 judgments passed in 2018 on the Republic of Moldova, the ECHR ascertained 46 cases of violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. More than half refer to acts of torture and violation of the right to liberty and security.

Since Moldova joined the European Convention on Human Rights until 2018, the most often violations of the Convention in the Moldovan cases included the mon-execution of court decisions, ill-treatment and inappropriate investigation of cases of ill-treatment and death, detention in poor conditions and illegal quashing of irrevocable court judgments.

Based on all the decisions and judgments passed since 1998 until December 31, 2018, the Republic of Moldova was obliged to pay over €16.6 million damages, of which €223,000 damages in 2018.