On 26 January 2023, ECtHR President Síofra O’Leary presented a summary of the Court’s activities and its statistics for 2022. The exceptionally serious events of the year, namely the invasion of Ukraine, the exclusion of Russia from the CoE, and the loss of its status as a High Contracting Party to the Convention have had significant legal consequences. At the end of 2022, some 74,650 applications were pending before the Court, 74% of which involved five countries: Turkey, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Romania, and Italy. Important applications included interstate cases, which the Court would give priority to. Almost 10,200 pending applications concerned conflicts between two Member States, i.e. Russia/Ukraine, Armenia/Azerbaijan, and Georgia/Russia. Of the total number of pending applications, some 23,850 were classified as priority cases because they raised important issues, for example under Art. 3 of the Convention.

Síofra O’Leary also called to mind that the ECtHR has been applying a new case management strategy since 2021 that aims at processing legally complex and often “sensitive impact" cases. In 2022, impact cases were decided, for instance, on sexual harassment in the workplace, freedom of expression of judges, and euthanasia.

Among other significant developments, on 1 February 2022, the time limit for bringing a case before the ECtHR under Protocol 15 to the Convention was reduced to four months from the date of the final domestic decision (→ eucrim 1/2022, 39). Furthermore, the dialogue between the Court and the superior courts of the CoE states was strengthened. The network of higher courts has now grown to the remarkable figure of 103 courts in 44 countries.

Lastly, 2022 brought the launch of the external version of the Court’s knowledge-sharing platform (ECHR-KS), which is now available to the public. The platform presents the latest analysis of case-law developments in a thematic and contextualised manner through particular Convention Articles and transversal themes. It is available in English and French and complements existing information tools such as HUDOC. Its content is updated on a weekly basis but is not binding on the Court.