The Council even set up an unique institution for monitoring the implementation of the Convention: the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The Council of Europe has furthermore adopted several conventions aiming at an improvement of the human rights situation in Europe.
Over the last decade, however, the number of individual applications by the Court has increased considerably, leading to an excessive caseload. Thus, the urgent need arose to adjust the system in order to guarantee the long-term effectiveness of the Court.
With the active support of Sweden, several recommendations were worked out resulting in Protocol No.14 to the Convention. This amending protocol was adopted by the Committee of Ministers in May 2004. All CoE member states, signatory to the European Convention, are supposed to ratify this protocol within two years (2006). The Protocol No.14 does not limit the individual’ s right of application, but aims at filtering the applications by the court, thus allowing it to concentrate on the most important cases.