Taking stock of pilot judgments: securing accountability for systemic human rights violations in Europe?

When they were introduced in the early 2000s, pilot judgments issued by the European Court of Human Rights represented a radical move away from the Court’s traditional individual justice approach, and marked a step change in responding to systemic human rights violations. They have been utilised in an attempt to address some of the most prevalent structural breaches across the continent of Europe, including dire prison conditions, excessively lengthy legal proceedings and the failure to implement decisions of national courts, as well as targeting grave problems for particular states, such as the restitution of nationalised property in Romania and individuals’ loss of permanent residency status and foreign currency deposits after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. These judgments have led to significant legislative and policy changes in many Council of Europe states; however, questions have also been raised about the detrimental consequences to individuals who are left without redress, and whether the reforms carried out are in fact sufficient to fully address the serious problems raised.

In this chapter, Alice Donald and Philip Leach assess the impact of the pilot judgment
procedure, after almost twenty years. They assess to what extent systemic violations have been resolved, and how this happened (at both the international level and through domestic developments). They consider the stumbling blocks in the most difficult cases, discerning the real obstacles to change, and analysing the efficacy of the contributions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers. This leads on to their conclusions as to how and why pilot judgments can be most effective, and an overall assessment of the pilot judgment procedure since its inception.