Defining the institution of a constitutional complaint as an effective remedy in the doctrine and practice of the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

The institute of constitutional complaint is quite common in many European countries, but in Ukraine it appeared only in 2017. The introduction of such a remedy is due to the need to protect human rights, on the one hand, and the preventive role of the constitutional review body in relation to a significant number of complaints to the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine - on the other. However, the “effectiveness” of such an institution in both planes is quite relative and depends on many elements. Today, the constitutional complaint implemented in Ukraine is only the beginning of a mechanism of constitutional control over violated human rights and does not play the role of an “effective” remedy at both national and international levels.
 This article defines the institution of a constitutional complaint as an effective remedy in the doctrine and practice of the European Court of Human Rights, as in some cases and in certain countries the Court considers a constitutional complaint an “effective” remedy within the meaning of Article 13 of the Convention on Human Rights. fundamental freedoms, but not in others. Therefore, it is important to define the criteria of “effectiveness” of an individual constitutional appeal, as well as the applicability of such criteria to the existing in Ukraine constitutional mechanism for reviewing cases on constitutional complaints.
 Given the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as statistics and polls, the criteria for considering a constitutional complaint as an effective remedy in the European Court of Human Rights are quite different from those established in Ukraine. In addition, the “effectiveness” of the constitutional complaint is also affected by domestic political processes, which reflect the public’s trust in certain legal remedies and in certain state bodies as a whole.