Turkey received record fine from ECHR in 2016, report says

Güven ÖZALP – BRUSSELS

Turkey received a record high fine from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2016, according to an annual report by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers. 

The ECHR fined 88.3 million euros in total to a number of countries, of which 20.7 million euros were fined to Turkey.

The countries that followed Turkey under the record fine list were Albania with 18.2 million euros, Italy with 15.1 million euros and Russia with 7.3 million euros.

According to the report, Turkey has not taken action into any of the 1,430 cases filed against it yet. Turkey ranked third place in the list of ECHR’s unimplemented judgements, while Italy and Russia were ranked first and second, respectively. Turkey, in 2015, refused to look into 1,591 ECHR judgements. 

Turkey closed 274 cases filed against it in 2016, the report stated. The figure carried Turkey atop a list of the most case-closing countries. Slovenia and Russia followed Turkey on the list. 

Some 22 of the unimplemented judgements regarding Turkey by the ECHR has been under intense assessment process for the past five years. 

The intense assessment process in order to be implemented is required to be a case of absolute priority, pilot judgement, structural problems or an international one. Some 96 cases filed against Turkey have been under intense assessment processes for more than five years.