The Chairman of the European Court is interested in the judicial reforms carried out in Azerbaijan

In the Ministers Committee of the Council of Europe under the chairmanship of Great Britain in the town of Brighton a high-level Conference dedicated to the activity of the European Court was held.

It should mentioned that in recent years much attention is paid to the activity of the European Court, as the number of complaints that went to low has increased much, the ways for solving this problem is being looked into. At present there are 150 complaint applications in the court and 20 years is needed in order to consider them. Besides it, more than 60 thousands new applications from different European countries are annually sent. More than half of all complaints enter from 4 states: Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Romania. The number of applications that enter from Azerbaijan is 1.3 times less than the whole European number. All this results in groundless increase of the working load of the court. Dealing with this issue there were held Conferences in the town of Interlaken, Switzerland in 2010 and in the town of Izmir, Turkey in 2011.

The spokesman of the Ministry of Justice informed AzerTac that Brighton Conference was represented by Minister of Justice of Azerbaijan, the Chairman of the Judicial-Legal Council Mr.Fikrat Mammadov, Chairman of the Supreme Court Mr.Ramiz Rzayev, permanent representative of the country to Council of Europe, ambassador Mr.Arif Mammadov and authorized representative at European Court, also members of Judicial-Legal Council, as well as officials from the Ministry of Justice.   

British Lord Chancellor on Justice Mr. Kennet Clark, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Mr. Turbyorn Yagland, Chairman of PACE Mr. Jean-Klod Minyon, Chairman of the European Court of Human Rights Mr. Nicolas Bratsa, newly-appointed European Commissar on Human Rights Mr. Nils Mujniyeks delivered speeches in the opening ceremony.

In the distinguished Conference participated by Ministers of Justice of the Council of Europe member states and other highly-ranked officials, increasing of effectiveness of activity of the European Court, improvement of European judicial systems, and other actual issues had been discussed and exchange of views had been held.
        
Minister of Justice Mr. Fikrat Mammadov informed the participants of the Conference about judicial reforms carried out in Azerbaijan under the leadership of Mr. President Ilham Aliyev, and spoke about increasing of the number of judges in order more effective realization of justice, modernization of judicial infrastructure, implementation of information-communication technologies and about transparency in choosing the candidates to court judges according to values of norms in Europe.  

Besides it in the Conference, it was stressed that as a result of Armenia-Azerbaijan the Upper Garabagh conflict 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territories were occupied, over one million people became refugees and internally displaced persons, violation of many conventional rights of these citizens.

English and Russian version of the speech were distributed among the participants of the Conference.
At the end of the Conference the Brighton Declaration on additional arrangement was adopted.

In the framework of the Conference there were meetings with the Chairman of European Court, newly-appointed European Commissar on Human Rights and other officials of the Council of Europe who showed their interest in the reforms carried out in our country.

At the same time, our delegation had useful talks with the ministers of justice of several countries and with the heads of some delegations.