ECHR? No Country In Europe Obeys The ECHR’s Rules And That Is a Fact

6 min readDec 26, 2023

I will show you that the ECHR is not fit for purpose and how many times countries disobey its rules I will also show you that although the UK also disobeys the ECHR’s rules we come top on obeying ECHR rules

I will show it's not fit for purpose, and if it's not fit for purpose why on earth is the UK still part of this thing and obeying it? which calls into question the continued existence of this entire, expensive, and dubious structure.

With the UK’s liberal Establishment howling about the UK Government’s plans to attempt to deport illegal migrants, and MPs and the Lords vowing to vote down this legislation (which is already too weak to do its job), I look at the ‘European Convention on Human Rights’ — and its Courts.

So let's take a look at the rulings by the ECHR against European countries, 1959–2022

Turkey: 3,458
Russia: 3,317
Italy: 1,915
Ukraine: 1,800
Romania: 1,541
Poland: 1,057
Greece: 969
France: 785
Bulgaria: 723
Hungary: 612
Moldova: 492
UK: 329

[Source: European Court of Human Rights. Dec 2023.]

The ECHR has found the following countries guilty, compared to the UK:-

Turkey: 11 times more
Russia: 10 times more
Italy: 6 times more
Ukraine: 5 times more
Romania: 5 times more
Poland : 3 times more
Greece : 3 times more
France: 2 times more

The illogical madness behind a non-EU but quasi-EU institution

The Government’s latest attempts to solve the illegal boat migrant crisis created by President Macron’s refusal to take back his migrants hinges on deporting the people who arrive at a processing centre in Rwanda.

It is well-known that this was stopped by UK lawyers appealing to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France. One single ECHR judge sitting in France one evening overruled the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Here are some facts about the ECHR which readers might wish to know.

The European Court of Human Rights — some basic facts

ECHR is based in a grandiose suite of buildings in Strasbourg, France — purpose-built
The whole thing cost a fortune, with over 300,000 sq ft of floor space
The courtroom alone covers over 9,250 sq ft
Context: The average size of an entire property in the UK is circa 730 sq ft — 1/12th the size of the courtroom
There are 46 member countries, 27 of which are EU members
The EU insisted the UK submitted to the rulings of the ECHR
However, the EU has not submitted itself
It is not possible to bring any legal case against the EU at the ECHR
It is, however, possible to bring a legal case against the UK
As of 30 June 2023, there were 76,750 pending applications to the court
There have been over 900 cases in total against the UK
Until March 2022 it was still possible for a Russian judge to rule on ‘human rights violations’ in the UK

[Sources: ECHR | EU Commission]

If the ECHR is so independent of the EU, how come it sounds so much like it?

It is often said that the ECHR is part of the Council of Europe, not the European Union. Technically this is true. However, I invite readers to study the photograph below, which comes from the ECHR’s website.

If the ECHR is so independent of the EU, readers might question why the main judging chamber of the ECHR has an enormous EU flag on its floor. Yes, it was the EU that appropriated this flag, but why doesn’t the ECHR switch to an amalgam of all the flags of countries which are members, including the United Kingdom?

The EU insists the UK must stay under the ECHR, but won’t sign up for it

In what must surely be one of the most blatant acts of EU hypocrisy, the EU insisted as part of the UK-EU ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’ that the UK remained signed up to the ECHR.

And yet the EU will not sign up itself. Finally, in 2013 it reached an agreement to join, but was then blocked by its court: the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ). Ten years later the EU is STILL not a member of the ECHR.

Here is what the EU Commission has to say about the EU’s current position:-

“At present, all 46 Council of Europe member states, including the 27 EU Member States, are already parties to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the EU itself is not. This means that actions of the EU’s institutions, agencies and other bodies cannot currently be challenged at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.”
- European External Action Service (EU Commission), 18 Oct 2021

The latest word on the EU’s website is “Negotiations for the accession of the EU to the ECHR were relaunched in September 2020 and are currently ongoing.”

To call this position breathtakingly hypocritical would surely be an understatement.

Does the UK’s Supreme Court have to obey the ECHR? Yes

It has been suggested by some commentators that the UK does not have to obey the rulings of the ECHR, but merely treats them as ‘advisory’. Below is what the ECHR has to say about this.

“[The Court’s] judgments are binding on the countries concerned and have led governments to alter their legislation and administrative practice in a wide range of areas.”
- ECHR document, accessed 14 Aug 2022

So, the rulings are indeed binding, according to the ECHR.

‘Rule of law’? — What law?

The UK gave the world the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, and the principle of Common Law.

Conversely, the ECHR operates under the principle of the Napoleonic code of Corpus Juris, where you are in essence assumed to be guilty, can be held in detention for very long periods, have no right to silence, and none of the other rights which the British people take for granted.

The sole British judge on the ECHR was born and educated in Germany

I have analysed the judges of the ECHR. I also looked at the ‘seniority’ as defined by the ECHR.

The sole British judge was born and educated in Germany and sits down at №20 in terms of precedence, below the judge from the tiny country of Cyprus. He moved to the UK in 1988, after completing legal studies in Germany.

In 2016 ECHR judges were paid €200,000 per annum tax-free. In today’s terms in pounds for a normally-taxed person that would be the equivalent of over £300,000 per year.

To put the ‘British’ judge’s position into context, a judge from the tiny principality of Andorra (of which President Macron is the Prince) is 14 places above him in terms of seniority. A judge from Bosnia is 11 places above him. And a judge from Serbia — hardly known for its human rights — is nine places above him.

As we start to look ahead to 2024, it must surely be asked if it is not high time to re-evaluate the UK’s membership of some bloated and outdated institutions which had their formations in very different times. The ECHR is a classic example, but there are others, including the UN and its health offshoot the WHO.

Who better than the newly independent United Kingdom to take the lead on this? These aged organisations are not fit for purpose in the 21st century. Their structures and guiding principles need to be redrawn for the era in which we now find ourselves.

If we had an FCDO which was remotely functional and in touch with public opinion — in the UK and around Europe — I would advocate that they start work on this. Sadly, they are probably the last people I would choose to take this on. This will require strong and decisive political leadership. We can all only hope this will appear very soon.

Sources: ECHR | EU Commission