The Protection of Human Rights after the Enlargment of the Council of Europe

Since 1949, the European system for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms has been based on the work of two cornerstone international institutions, the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. This system had to deal with the complex institutional and cultural changes that occurred in Europe after the fall of Communism. During the nineties in fact the member States of the Council have doubled in number, including those of Central and Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation. The aim of this paper is to clarify the effects of this enlargement on the policies of the Council and the role of the Court. The political and cultural integration of young democracies implies the evolution of the Council’s intervention in delicate areas like social cohesion and the peaceful coexistence of a wider variety of national minorities who now live in the same pan-European home. In this context the standards for the respect of human rights have been subject to a dynamic interpretation, and the sentences of the Court became the basis for such interpretation. By these reforms the Western European democracies found an answer to their need for an evolution of the entire system