The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) received 642 applications against Moldova in 2022. Compared to the country’s population, this number is very high, with Moldova ranking 4th out of 46 Council of Europe member states, and Moldovans applying to the ECtHR 5 times more often than the European average.

These findings are presented in an analytical paper by the Legal Resources Centre from Moldova (LRCM), published on 27 January 2023.

“In its judgments delivered in 2022, the ECtHR found 48 violations of the European Convention on Human Rights admitted by our country. Most of them concern ill-treatment, faulty investigation of ill-treatment and violation of the right to a fair trial”, said Daniel GOINIC, Director of the Human Rights Programme at the LRCM, one of the authors of the research.

Since the ratification of the ECHR in 1997, by 31 December 2022, the ECtHR has delivered 575 judgments in Moldovan cases. In 492 (86%) of these cases at least one human rights violation was found. In this respect, Moldova is far ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, which ratified the ECHR long before Moldova and have a much larger population.

By 31 December 2022, the Republic of Moldova has been ordered by the ECtHR to pay 22 448 198 euros, of which 544 448 euros in 2022.

“The majority of human rights violations were due to the misconduct of state representatives, in particular the poor quality of work of judges and prosecutors, and not to legislative shortcomings”, said Vladislav GRIBINCEA, Justice Programme Director at the LRCM.

As of 31 December 2022, 1 020 Moldovan applications were pending and about 97% of them have a good chance of being successful. This number is almost equal to the total number of applications on which Moldova has been convicted in the 25 years that people have been able to complain to the ECtHR against Moldova. In terms of the total number of pending applications, Moldova ranks 12th out of 46 Council of Europe member states.

In 2022, the ECtHR delivered a total of 1 163 judgments, with the most judgments against Russia – 384, Ukraine – 144 and Romania – 81. The ECtHR has not handed down any judgments against Sweden, the Netherlands or Ireland.

The analytical note can be found on this link. The recording of the press conference where statistics on Moldovan cases at the ECtHR in 2022 were presented is available here.