Analysis of Article 6 of the ECHR: In Recognition and Enforcement of Civil Judgments among European Countries

Abstract

The right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights plays a crucial role in procedural protection in the recognition and enforcement of judgments within the European sphere. While the European Court of Human Rights has developed various scrutiny standards for judgments of different statuses by contracting states to safeguard procedural rights under Article 6 of the Convention, there is still a lack of systematic clarification regarding the application sequence of relevant scrutiny rules in the judicial practice of the Court. This paper analyzes the Court's application sequence of rules through the examination of existing case rules and interpretation of recent cases. The study finds that in judicial practice, the Court examines the admissibility criteria based on the standard of "crucial importance of the judgment for the parties"; after meeting the admissibility criteria, the Court applies the "equivalent protection standard" to determine exceptions where contracting states do not require scrutiny; in cases requiring scrutiny, the Court guides its scrutiny scope based on the rules established in the Saccoccia case.