Ukraine pays up to EUR 200K per month in line with ECHR rulings - judge

At the expense of the state budget, Ukraine pays from 100 to 200 thousand euros per month according to the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Over 2 million euros were paid out last year.

That’s according to an ECHR judge from Ukraine, Mykola Gnatovskyy, who spoke in an interview with Ukrinform.

"On average, one ECHR decision for each individual applicant is about thousands of euros. Some are EUR 2,000, some are EUR 3,000, and some may even reach EUR 10,000. There are about a dozen or more such people who receive monthly compensation from the ECHR. That is, roughly speaking, depending on month, the government owes people somewhere around EUR 100,000, up to EUR 200,000 per month," he said.

According to Gnatovskyy, statistics on awarded sums are kept by the Department of Execution of ECHR Decisions. According to their data, in 2023 the total amount was more than EUR 2 million.

"I understand that this is good for people, but the main task of the Court is to solve systemic problems regarding human rights.

And sometimes one gets the impression that among those who hand down rulings are officials who believe that it is better to pay under ECHR rulings than to engage deeper and ultimately solve the problem. But, to be honest, this is a road to nowhere," the ECHR judge believes.

In his opinion, the government is able to find funds to reform the penitentiary system.

"Other governments succeeded to this end because there are options on the table. Some were helped by soft loans from the Development Bank of the Council of Europe, while others were helped directly by the European Union," Gnatovskyy notes.

He emphasized that Ukraine is primarily interested in solving issues in the penitentiary system, as they pose an obstacle to further European integration.

According to the judge, last year, the ECHR passed 130 rulings in which at least one or more violations of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms by Ukraine were fixed. Very often, similar statements are combined in one case, so, in fact, violations have been established in a much larger number of claims.