 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Sir David Williams lecture for this year. These lectures were started in 2001 to celebrate the legal scholarship and the legal life of Sir David Williams. Sir David was a very eminent public lawyer who specialised in the control of public power. But he was one of the main founders of modern administrative law in the universities, particularly in Cambridge. He was also passionate about fundamental rights and appropriate behaviour in public administration. His energy in helping to launch administrative law in this university is being recognised by the faculty of law, which is now trying to raise funds for a Sir David Williams professorship of public law. From being the Rouseball Professor and President of Wolfson College, Sir David moved to be the first full-time vice-chancellor of this university. He led the university through quite difficult periods of various well. In his retirement he was energetic in raising funds for the university, for law and for the Squire Law Library. And he was also very energetic in his presence in the faculty supporting younger scholars. We're very glad to have today present here Lady Sally Williams and members of the family. And we're also glad to have Mr Michael Russ through whose generosity this lecture is funded and who helped to work with Sir David Williams. And we're also grateful to the other co-funder, Sir John Nolan, who unfortunately can't be with us this evening. It's my pleasure to welcome Judge Jean-Paul Coster to deliver this year's Sir David Williams lecture. He was judge of the European Court of Human Rights for 13 years and its president from January 2007 until November 2011 when he retired. As you will guess from his name, his family is by origin from Italy from Genoa. His father was a French civil servant working in Tunis where Jean-Paul Coster was born. And Judge Coster has had a very distinguished educational career, first at the lycée Henri IV before moving to the Faculty of Law at the University of Paris, then on to Sciences Po and then on to the École Nationale de l'Administration, which is, as the French would say, a parcours parfait. On leaving Ena, he chose the concedeta inspired in part by leading human rights lawyer Jean-Reverau and worked closely with Guy Breban. And it was his work with Guy Breban in the research section of the concedeta that first brought me into contact with him in 1985. He gave what he thought was a very simple task. Write a few pages on public property in English law. I learnt the lesson that comparative law can be difficult. For a start, there's no such branch of English law as public property law. And it's rather difficult to explain to a rational Frenchman used to precise legal concepts. Such arcane mysteries of English law as crown lands, defence property and local government. But the good humour and tolerance of a national lawyer trying to explain his system to that rational Frenchman demonstrated the qualities he needed for being a judge at Strasbourg. Where lawyers need to explain the national law before the judge can begin to assess how human rights apply. His ability to move effortlessly from the concedeta to Strasbourg was shown by the fact that he was elected to the highest office by his peer judges. We're fortunate that he's come today to talk about the relationship between national constitutional courts and the European Court of Human Rights. Because he's eminently placed to reflect on that process. And it's a highly topical topic for at the moment following the Brighton Declaration. He has entitled his recent book, The European Court of Human Rights, Judges for Freedom. A value which Sir David Williams would have very much appreciated. It's with great pleasure that I invite Jean-Paul Costa to deliver this year's Sir David Williams lecture. Thank you very much. I feel extremely honoured to have been invited to deliver this Sir David Williams lecture. Dear Lady Sally Williams, dear members of Williams family, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends. If I am honoured is due to many reasons. First, it's an honour to pay a thorough tribute to the memory of this prestigious lawyer and to his personality. I met David Williams only once in the context of the European group of public law, of which he had been one of the first members at the end of the 80s. And my friend Professor Spiros Fogatis, with the real funder, can testify that I say the truth. The group eventually gave him a load as you in 2004, thus acknowledging the man's eminent qualities as a lawyer, as a professor, especially for English administrative law, as an administrator too. He still is very well known, even on the continent and elsewhere in the world. Secondly, the people who in the past gave the Sir David Williams lectures are so famous that I feel shy being added to their list, which I won't enumerate. The last and not least reason is that for the first time I have an opportunity to be in Cambridge and to address here a very learned audience. I must confess that until today I have never been in this marvellous city and university. It's never too late, I believe. And I'm very grateful to David Feldman and John Bell, thanks to whom I have now here in this prestigious Faculty of Flow. As we got John Bell, he reminded me the good times, the good old times of the 80s. And when I heard you speaking about French or English properties, domain public, it reminded me also a recent case of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. I was presiding, it's a GAPI Oxford versus United Kingdom, and I must admit that to me adverse possession is still a little mysterious. The main subject of my lecture will be the relations between the European Court of Human Rights, which I will call the Court, and the National Supreme and or Constitutional Court. I admit that having, during 13 years, a judge of the Strasbourg Court, and the last five years it's president, I pretend to well know the matter. It's not at all an easy issue. One can imagine that such relationship is complex and not always harmonious. I suspect my lecture will make those aspects even more obvious. Before addressing my main topic, I would like to make a few preliminary remarks. To begin with, the European Court of Human Rights, the Court, is no longer a young court, far from that, as you all know the European Convention on Human Rights created it in 1950, and the Court started its operations in 1959. Its first judgement dates back to 1960, more than half a century ago. My purpose is evidently not to tell you the history even summarised of the growth and development of the court, not even to emphasise its outstanding achievements since that far off period. You generally know that. What is probably more interesting is to describe the current problems the Strasbourg Court is facing and will go on being confronted with in the next future. One of them, very well known, is a quantitative problem. I mean by that the unbelievable amount of new applications registered each year and consequently of pending cases which are in the registry's docket. Without entering into much detail, I simply see that for the very first time since the creation of the European system, during the year 2012, much fewer new applications have been registered than the number of cases disposed of by the court. The figure of pending cases at the end of 2012 is very significantly lower than the number at the end of 2011. It had reached the huge figure of 150,000 pending applications. It has been reduced within a year to 128,000, still a huge number, but clearly significantly decreasing. These spectacular results, the first inversion in the long-term trend, is mainly the result of the entry into force of protocol 14 to the Convention, especially due to the newly operating single judge procedure. It is also a consequence of the improvement in the organization and management of the institution, testified by a recent audit made at the request of the committee of ministers of the Council of Europe, without forgetting the help of several member states that have put many lawyers at the disposal of the registry. As regards protocol 14, I cannot hide my satisfaction since when I was presiding the court, I fought during more than three years in order to convince the Russian Federation, the country which was blocking the process, to ratify protocol 14, what they finally did on the very day of the opening of the Interlaken Conference, which I had strongly recommended the member states of the Council of Europe to convene, and Switzerland to organize what they did very well. Interlaken, I must confess, is my brainchild, and it is likely that together with other steps taken during my presidency, it has speeded up Russia's ratification of protocol 14, even if more than three years have been lost. Nevertheless, this new tendency does not at all mean that the quantitative problems encountered by the court are overcome, though the situation starts to improve. First, it will take a long time without new measures going beyond the protocol 14 provisions, before the overall number of still pending applications be reduced down to a satisfactory level. Secondly, if probably the number of inadmissible petitions, and even of repetitive, well-founded applications will go on decreasing in the next years, the same cannot say for the time being about not repetitive, well-founded cases, which often disclose serious violations of human rights. The court mainly aims at correcting and compensating serious violations, and at doing so within a reasonable delay, failing which it would miss its objective and lack credibility. Another issue that the court has to deal with is more qualitative. It consists of the lot of criticism against its rulings, which are raising, and which are sometimes contradictory. While some non-governmental organisations or members of the bar and civil society blame the court for being too shy and not going far enough in protecting and developing rights and liberties, several states, including UK, of course, strongly criticise it because of its so-called bold approach in the interpretation of the Convention and its protocols. They contain that threshold is or is becoming judicially activist with a far-stretching case law. You all know that after Interlaken in 2010, two other ministerial conferences were set up, one in Ismir in 2011, another one in Brighton last year, and that the tune has been less in favour of the court. The Brighton declaration has insisted on the introduction in the Convention or its preamble through a protocol number 15 of the subsidiarity principle and the margin of appreciation. The meaning of the message is clear to oblige the court to an increased self-restraint in its scrutiny, especially when delicate human rights issues arise or when the national parliaments are involved. I must not remind you of the very strong controversy about detainees' rights to vote and the conflict which remains not solved at least as far as Britain is concerned. Admittedly criticism of the court judgments and challenges of its very legitimacy is no new. In more than 50 years, the Strasbourg system has born many attacks coming from various parts. Currently, the attacks come mainly from countries like Russia, Ukraine or Turkey, where the human rights records are clearly poor, but also sometimes from old democracies and Britain is not the only one even if this country is a leader. One of the elements that I will try to elucidate in a few moments is precisely whether the relations with national, supreme and constitutional courts may help or to the contrary harm the court. A last preliminary remark is that the relationship between Strasbourg and Luxembourg must not be overlooked while the European Court of Justice is obviously not a national tribunal. Its role in Europe is crucial, including in the field of fundamental rights. The Morso since 2009 when the European Charter of Fundamental Rights with and through the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty has acquired legal binding force. Now, if I have to classify the possible approaches to my subject, it seems to me that there are basically three rational Frenchmen. The theoretical approach, the formal or legal approach and the informal relations point of view. The theoretical aspect of the relationship between the court and the national, supreme and constitutional courts is complex. Even if the Convention is an international multilateral binding treaty which imposes on the states currently 47 strong duties and obligations, this implies no clear answer to or guidance about the crucial question of the relations between the judicial systems, European and national. It is true that under Article 46 of the Convention, the states in practice a defending state, more precisely when the court has held the state responsible for having breached the Convention, are obliged to abide by the final judgments in any case which there are parties. The consequences of a judgment finding a violation may be very various. However, as there exists the international public law principle of the state's unity, if a judgment given by the court finds that a Convention provision has been violated, the obligation to execute the court's judgment involves the necessity for the relevant national courts to modify its own interpretation and application of the Convention provision at stake if necessary. At least this is true for the future. The court has absolutely no power, neither under international law nor under the Convention itself, to quash or modify the judgment of a national tribunal which is restudicata. In its caseload, the court frequently says that it's not a forced instance tribunal which goes beyond the impossibility of quashing a judgment and includes establishment of facts and the assessment of evidence left to the national courts. Even in the hypothesis where the national legislation provides more frequently in criminal matters for the reopening of a trial as a consequence of the finding by Strasbourg of a violation, the reopening not necessarily leads to the overthrow of the previous national judgment. A very recent example can be given of such reopening. A judgment of the court decided at the end of 2012 that a criminal trial, in a case of homicide, had been unfair and contrary to Article 6. As a consequence, the criminal chamber of the French Court of Cascition decided to quash the judgment and the accused person was released on bail but he will have to face a new trial. But for the future, certainly the national judiciary, the supreme and constitutional courts included, are under the obligation to modify their caseload for the correct implementation of the court's judgment. There arises a delicate problem. What happens if the national legislation is contrary to the Strasbourg judgment? Let's suppose that a supreme court has ruled to the effect that a piece of legislation is compatible with the convention and the court has decided on the contrary. Is it up to the national court to immediately adopt the interpretation given in Strasbourg or should it wait for a change in domestic legislation? The answer is not a yes or no but more it depends. Because there are different legal patterns of relations between the convention and national legislation, in many legal systems like in Germany, for instance, or Italy, the convention is considered as being at the same level as the act of parliament. In other countries such as France, the convention being an international treaty is hierarchically superior to the legislation but inferior to the constitution. In Austria, the convention and the constitution are placed at the same level, while in the Netherlands the convention is even higher than the national constitution. Of course I will not describe the system which has existed in this country since the incorporation into national law of the convention provisions by the Human Rights Act. You know it much better than I do. The system is very similar in Ireland. Such theoretical differences have practical consequences. To give you a concrete example regarding my own country, France, in a case dealing with discrimination, France was found in violation of Article 14 of the convention in combination with Article 1 of Protocol 1 property rights, because the applicant, an adulterine child, had been discriminated against as regard his inheritance rights. Compared with a legitimate child. Such discrimination was enforced under an article of the Code Civil, drafted at the time of Napoleon, and in the domestic procedure the Court of Cascation had ruled that said provision was not contrary to the European Convention. A few weeks after the Court's judgment, a person in the same situation as the applicant brought an analogous case before a first instance tribunal, which correctly, according to me, put aside that article of the Code Civil and gave satisfaction to this person with the reasonings that the convention prevails over the civil code and that the interpretation of the European Court was decisive. It is only a year after that the Parliament abrogated the article concerned. In other words, the first instance court, instead of waiting for the Lysi Staters' intervention, had applied the constitution under which the convention is superior, as I said, to the ordinary laws. This is possible in the French constitutional system, not necessarily everywhere. Another example shows the diversity of the theoretical relations between Strasbourg and the national courts. In Turkey, there were state security courts established by the constitution in order to adjudicate cases of people charged with terrorist acts in a broad sense. They were composed of two civilian judges and a military judge. The Court decided that such composition was contrary to the principles of traditional independence and impartiality and in violation of Article 6 Paragraph 1 of the convention. To enforce the judgment further confirmed by many others, the defending state had to modify not only its legislation, but also the Turkish constitution itself, and this was done. A third example, again in a French case, may give you the impression that the logical consequences of a theoretical model are sometimes going far. A bill had been passed in Parliament in France, including retrospective provisions, to the effect to validate decisions regarding social security in the framework of a judicial conflict between employees of social security offices and those agencies. The French constitutional court, the Conseil Constitutional, before which the bill had been challenged, decided that the retrospective provisions were in conformity with the constitution. The applicants came to Strasbourg. In a grand chamber judgment, the court clearly said that even if the Conseil Constitutional had decided that the bill was constitutional, that was not sufficient to establish that it was in conformity with the convention. And the court held that Article 6 Paragraph 1 had been violated for breach of the principle of equality of arms and of the fair trial. Implicitly, by necessarily, this judgment means that the convention is superior, which is correct under international law, but not under French constitutional law. Fortunately, the Conseil Constitutional did apply afterwards the same approach about retrospective legislation, avoiding an open conflict between both jurisdictions. Now, at practical levels, the relations between the court and the domestic courts are in a simple sense. As I said, there is a clear obligation for any state, which stands from the convention, which is to execute a judgment in a case to which the state is a party. That duty has to be combined with the right to an effective remedy, Article 13 of the convention, and with the necessity to exhaust domestic remedies, Article 35, the transcription or transposition of the subsidiarity principle. This key provision is a sign equivalent condition for an application to be admissible. The result of those combined provisions is that, in most cases at least, the last domestic remedy consists of a final judgment of a supreme or constitutional court. Of course, if no effective remedy exists, the application is admissible and Article 13 of the convention is found violated by the state. But whenever that is the case, the civil court is more or less obliged on the merit of the case to check whether the domestic courts have correctly or wrongly interpreted the convention and applied it. If the judges in Strasbourg agree with the legal findings of the national court, the solution will be the rejection of the application. If they disagree, the logical solution will be to hold that the convention has been breached on the merits of the case. Any other solution would be paradoxical. It would mean that either the application would be inadmissible for lack of exhaustion of the national remedies or admissible on search grants, but then ill-funded if there were a systematic agreement between the court and the national last resort tribunal. Here come into play two important elements of the judicial review or European control exerted by Strasbourg, the proportionality principle and the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Many rights guaranteed by the convention and its protocols are not unlimited rights, obviously not prohibition of torture or slavery, for example, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, but many other rights. The wording of the relevant provisions shows that even when interference with the exercise of search rights is foreseen by law and pursues a legitimate aim, it is contrary to the convention if the interference is not necessary in a democratic society, which means proportionate to the aim pursue. Any assessment of this proportionality or disproportion leaves room for a subjective and qualitative evaluation of what the national courts have decided on the basis of the reasoning of their judgments. Again, it's not a simple matter of yes or no, like for the other conditions, the foreseeability of the law or the legitimacy of the aim. It calls for more subtle assessment. And this is widely increased by the application of the doctrine of the national margin of appreciation, which it must be noted is a purely judgment legal notion absent from the text of the convention. Anyhow, in the court's case law, the use of the margin of appreciation enables the court to restrain its control and to find in many hypotheses that the domestic court solution, not finding a violation, can be followed, especially when one talks about proportionality assessment. The margin of appreciation, which is based on the respect to be paid to national traditions, legal, cultural, religious, political and so forth, is broader or narrower depending on the matters. It may be compared to a safety valve in terms of extension or reduction of the court's scrutiny. It is also a factor that makes the relations with domestic courts easier and smoother. Indeed, the recourse to that notion has the evident effect of reducing the number of cases where the court in Strasbourg disagrees with domestic jurisdictions, usually the supreme and constitutional courts. Those who would like the court being more judicially activists frequently criticise the recourse to the margin of appreciation. But those who find the notion too flexible and vague, opening the jurisprudence to the risk of inconsistency for a case to another in a system based on the right to individual petitions, also often blame this recourse. It is certainly a domain of delicate relations of the court's judicial policy. I would like now turning to another point. What are the consequences of the divergencies when they happen between domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights? First of all, my experience makes me consider that there are not so many cases of flagrant divergencies. Or more precisely, the divergencies consist more often than not in a difference in the assessment of facts, not of real legal conflicts. Let's take the example of freedom of expression, a right clearly not unlimited, despite the strong protection offered by the Convention, Article 10, and by the court's case law. Many times, the facts that an applicant loses his or her case in the domestic trial, eventually wins it before the court, depends on a different evaluation of the proportionality of the interference, which itself depends on the different weight given by the national courts and the court to the interests in prisons. This is especially clear in the numerous cases of defamation dealt with in Strasbourg. Under paragraph 2 of article 10, one of the legitimate aims that authorize the limitation of freedom of speech is the protection of the reputation of rights of the authors. In all cases of liable or defamation, there is a balancing exercise between the principle of freedom of expression and the exception represented by the rights of the person subject to defamation. When the court finds for the applicant, contrary to the domestic courts, the conflict is more factual than really legal and usually does not raise serious objections on the part of the domestic courts, even if unsatisfied about the outcome of the case. An example can be given of a newspaper condemned to pay damages to a plastic surgeon for having reported testimonies of women complaining about the results of surgical interventions. Unlike the Supreme Court of Norway, the court found a violation of article 10 to the detriment of the newspaper. More serious is the divergence when it matters with the question of principle. In a famous case of a princess and her family having been photographed in their private activities, the court decided that the right of anyone on his or her image had to be protected under article 8, which guarantees a right to respect for private and family life. And that there had been a violation of article 8 in the material case, the famous case of Caroline von Hannover against Germany, Caroline of Monaco. The federal constitutional court of Germany had to the contrary ruled that the princess was a contemporary public figure and therefore was deprived of the protection under article 8, which could not in the circumstances prevail over freedom of quest. There is a conflict consisted of a question of legality and of principle. By not being convinced and not upholding the theory of the contemporary public figure, the Salzburg Court provoked a strong reaction from the federal constitutional court as well as from the German press and media. But I will return to this example afterwards. Another example shows a variety of possible situations. There was a provision in the French legislation about the press, according to which insulting a foreign head of state constituted a criminal offense. Upon that basis, a newspaper had been convicted and sentenced for an article about the king of Morocco. The criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation, one of the supreme French courts, had appealed that simply applying the legislation had appealed this interference simply applying the legislation. The Court found a violation of article 10. Subsequently, an act of parliament abrogated the legislation in order to comply with the court's judgment. In such hypothesis, a conflict was more about the legislation compared with a convention and it's difficult to introduce the national margin of appreciation in this case because it's difficult to understand that this kind of crime or offense could be compatible with a convention in France and maybe incompatible in Italy or Spain. Admittedly, the Court of Cassation could have itself ruled that the law was not compatible with the convention with article 10. But probably it preferred to leave the matter for Strasbourg to decide. Anyhow, there was apparently no negative reaction on the part of the Court of Cassation after the ruling of Strasbourg. Actually, in another case, the Court of Cassation themed even more than happy with the Strasbourg judgment which has decided that an article of the expropriation code was incompatible with article 6, paragraph 1 of the convention as contrary to the principle of equality of arms. The Court of Cassation had indeed expressed in its yearly administrative report the opinion that the article was unfair in its effects but did not judicially decide that it had to be set aside due to the primacy of the convention. Rather, its case law had constantly applied the article. After the Strasbourg judgment, the government issued a regulation to the effect of changing the provision. It looks like the Court of Cassation had requested to the European Court to decide and eventually was, as I said, satisfied with the subsequent changes. Now, and it will be my second series of remarks but I will be shorter, what are the legal relations between a domestic court and the court in Strasbourg as a conflictual or rather consensual? Again, it depends. In some hypothesis, the consensus prevails either because domestic courts immediately change their jurisprudence in order to draw the consequences of a European judgment or because they even anticipate in new matters what the Strasbourg court would decide in or would be likely to decide in analogous cases. In other hypothesis, the conflict remains. The domestic court refuses to follow the solution adopted by the court and there is no obvious issue to the conflict. And finally, there are cases where the traditional dialogue between the national courts and the Strasbourg court results in a sort of compromise. I try to provide you with a few examples belonging to the three categories. As regards the immediate change in domestic court's case law, fortunately many examples can be found. For instance, the Austrian constitutional court, as soon as back in 1985, changed its jurisprudence after a Strasbourg judgment finding a violation of Article 6 and decided that the provision of the food court was incompatible with the convention and also contrary to the constitution. More recently, the French Consulate d'Etat, the administrative supreme court, in several occasions has modified its case law to follow Strasbourg. One example relates to its own functioning. The members of the Consulate d'Etat were participated to the examination of a draft text, legislative text, when taking part to the consultative function of the Consulate must withdraw from the education of a petition challenging the legality of the text. This is a direct and immediate consequence of a judgment delivered by the court. The Consulate d'Etat goes further when it anticipates a possible future judgment of the European Court and delivers a judgment interpreting and applying the convention and its protocols on its own, like in an important case of discrimination in the field of pensions. The discrimination was between French former members of the army and persons having served in the French army and having lost French nationality after the decolonisation, mainly in Africa. This attitude of the Consulate d'Etat is remarkable inasmuch as during years this body has long resisted the influence of the European Court. Still in France, the Court of Cassation, also reluctant in the past, is now clearly obedient, inverted commas, to the rulings made in Strasbourg. In 2011, the main panel of the Court of Cassation solemnly decided that whenever the Strasbourg Court has issued a judgment and settled the problem, even in a case against another country, it was Turkey, it is necessary to immediately draw the consequences of that judgment without waiting for the intervention of the legislator. The stance of the Court of Cassation was in relation to an important issue, namely the presence of a lawyer to assist a person in custody since the very beginning of the custody. In United Kingdom, most of the judgments made in Strasbourg, contrary to a judgment of a domestic court, are executed and give birth to changes in the domestic case law. For instance, in the cases of people revoked from the military forces on the grounds of their sexual orientation or sexualities, the leave to appeal had been refused to the applicants. After the judgment in Strasbourg finding for them, the domestic courts changed their case law in this kind of cases. It is true that the government had changed their policy. The same applies for the so-called martial courts cases. As regards the French Constitutional Court, it expressly referred to a judgment of the court in its October 2004 opinion about the conformity to the constitution of the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe, which was eventually rejected by referendum in France and in the Netherlands. In 2010, the Conseil went further than the Court in protecting the Convention of Rights. It decided that the provision of the Court of Procedure Penal was contrary to the French Constitution, whereas the Court decided that the same provision was compatible with Article 6 of the Convention. So it's a reverse situation compared with the problem of retrospective legislation. It must also be noticed that the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights try as far as possible to modify or adapt their respective case law in order to avoid conflicts. By example, the Luxembourg Court has changed its interpretation of home under Article 8 of the Convention, extended it to business premises in order to apply the Strasbourg interpretation. Reciprocly, Strasbourg follow Luxembourg, like in a case of discrimination between men and women in a matter of pensions. In the second category, there are persisting conflicts between the Strasbourg Court and the domestic courts. Probably the most fabulous example is against the case of the rights to vote of the detainees. The story is well known. In Earth versus UK in 2005, the Court decided that a blanket disenfranchisement of the prison population was exceeding the national margin of application and was incompatible with Article 3 of Article 1, which guarantees the right to vote. These judgments was actually never enforced. In 2011, in a pilot judgment, Greens, the Court confirmed worst. And finally, in a case versus Italy, the Court paradoxically further confirmed its case law, even if finding no violation of Article 1 Article 3, the ban against the applicant was not disproportionate. In particular, due to the seriousness of the crime and the severity of the penalty. Now, the board is still on the British side. The Committee of Ministers after Greens and Scopolards, its Italian case, has given 18 months to the British authorities for enforcing Earth. But it's clear that the resistance is mainly coming from the government and parliament, even if in the case of Earth, the judiciary did not give satisfaction to the applicant. A less example is the Swiss case of Nolinger and Schuch in a sensitive case of international abduction of a child within the context of the AIDS Convention. The Swiss Federal Court had ordered a Swiss mother, what abducted her son from Israel, fearing some dangers if he stayed there with his father to return the child. A chamber of the Court in Salzburg held that there was no violation of Article 8 stemming from the order. As the request of the applicants, Mrs Nolinger and his son, the case was referred to the Green Chamber and the Green Chamber reversed the Chamber's judgment and concluded that Switzerland had breached Article 8. The Swiss Federal Court strongly reacted, arguing that the lapse of time had influenced the Green Chamber and given an unfair ruling. In a sense, this argument can be accepted, but the very possibility opened by the Convention of a re-hearing of an application by the Green Chamber would be deprived of effect if the first judgment in Salzburg should have to be always agreed. The third category of cases that I like to mention consists of a true judicial dialogue between national courts and the European Court. A good example is the British case of Alcawadra and Terry. It relates with deposition of witnesses and evidence by Hersey. In its chamber judgment, the Court found the violation of Article 6 in respect of the two applicants and established some principles about testimonies and evidence. Following that judgment, in a case called Horn Castle, the Supreme Court took into account the Strasbourg case law while calling for a review of its principles as firmly suggested by Lord Phillips in his opinion. Subsequently, the Green Chamber re-heard both cases as a request of the British government and reached the conclusion that there had been a violation as regards Mr Terry, but not in the case of Mr Alcawadra. This nuanced position is clearly taking into consideration and reflecting the Supreme Court's arguments and reaching a compromise between the Chamber's first reasoning and the Supreme Court's written position. Even in the controversial and already mentioned case of the right to one's image, a sort of compromise has been found. After a strong resistance, the German Federal Constitutional Court inflected its position. The Committee of Ministers in a 2007 resolution acknowledged that Germany had executed the first for an over case. A second for an over case was brought to Strasbourg in different circumstances, together with an Axel Springer case, and it has enabled the Court to express again a nuanced position. In the first case, the Court found the violation of Article 10, while in the second case, the application of Caroline from Anover was rejected and no violation of Article 10. It was found. Manifestly, the balance between freedom of speech and respect to private life has been shifted, in a sense, more favorable to the press. It seems that the judgments have been well received by the Court in Cowsham. Finally, a kind of more general compromise has appeared between the Conseil Constitutional and the Court for procedural and structural reasons. An amendment to the French Constitution has deeply changed and substantially increased the role of the Conseil, especially in the field of the protection of liberties. Since 1958, it has been an organ of control of the conformity to the constitution of the legislation. But now, instead of intervening merely between the vote of a bill by the Parliament and its promulgation and entry into force, the Conseil is entitled to decide whether any piece of legislation, even an old one, is constitutional and if not so to question. The new procedure called question prioritaire de constitutionale, preliminary question of constitutionality, has some similarities with the reference to the European Court of Justice for preliminary ruling and is triggered by a judgment of a French Court, which has doubts about the conformity of a law to the constitution. Indirectly, it is at the disposal of any citizen. The scope of this procedure is to check whether a legislative provision infringes the rights and liberties guaranteed by the constitution. Admittedly, such rights are not exactly the same as the rights guaranteed by the Convention on Human Rights, but they are very close and the result is that without being bound by the decision and judgments of the Strasbourg Court, the Conseil Constitutional inspired itself off the rulings of Strasbourg and there is progressive convergence between the Conseil and the Court. Finally, I would like to devote a little time to the informal relations between the European Court and domestic courts. By informal, I mean a relationship independent from the judicial activity and judicial decisions. These relations have developed relatively recently. Until 1998, when both the Court and the former European Commission of Human Rights, which disappeared with protocol 11, were not permanent and met 8 or 10 days a month, the links with other jurisdictions did exist, but they were rather rare. My predecessor as president, Lutsus Willaber, had the idea to strengthen such relations, especially but not exclusively, with the Supreme Court of the Eastern European Countries, recently entered into the Council of Europe and newly acquired to the principles of democracy and the rule of law. I personally decided when I became the Court's president to even intensify that relationship. When I paid official visits to the States, 37 or 38 in five years, my schedule was usually including at least a meeting with the Supreme or Constitutional Court of the country. From time to time, I went to special one-day working meetings with high domestic courts, or I hosted in Strasbourg the working visit of such a court. These contacts are not purely courtese meetings, and sometimes their atmosphere is frank, even controversial. In my recent book, I have given to those relations the name of judicial diplomacy. They are also called dialogue between judges or dialogue of judges. I must say that they are extremely useful and permit to overcome some misunderstandings and even to transform conflicts into compromises of the kind I already referred to. It is a part of my presidential activities, which not only I liked very much, but that I found worthwhile. Clearly, not all divergencies can be overcome when a national supreme or constitutional court is convinced that its own interpretation of the European Convention is well reasoned and funded. The European Court of Human Rights, I repeat, has no hierarchical power over domestic courts. Its authority derives from the Convention, especially from articles 1932 and 1946, which explains its role and affirms the binding force of its judgments. But such authority is more interpretative than anything else, and it is impossible for the court and even for the committee of ministers to really oblige a domestic court to change its case law as a consequence of a judgment made in Strasbourg. In fact, the judicial dialogue implies the necessity for both interlocutors to try and convince the other. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But in the long run, periodical relations and meetings between national and international judges are useful, even fruitful and certainly indispensable. In a few cases, contacts exist with national courts out of Europe, such as with the Supreme Court of Canada, or more recently the United States Supreme Court. Admittedly, there are no direct influences, but more and more a network of courts is appearing in the world, especially in the field of fundamental rights. And beyond courtesy, it is very useful to get acquainted with extra European jurisdictions and their activity and decisions. When the first meeting with the US Supreme Court took place in March 2012, George Washington University organized a seminar with judges of Strasbourg, including myself, justices of the Supreme Court and academics and scholars. The general theme was freedom of speech, as it is protected under the American First Amendment and under the European Convention, and the debates were highly profitable to all, I think. I realize that I'm probably at the end of my presentation. Before ending this lecture, well, I wanted to say a few sentences, but this will be for questions and answers, maybe, for the specifically relationship between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Before ending this lecture, I would like to conclude with a few words about the future of the court, which I had the honor to be a judge and the president. Are there more reasons for being optimistic or pessimistic? Speaking prudently, it seems to me that the worst has been avoided. That is clear in terms of number of new and pending applications, although we are just at the beginning of the improvement process. In terms of political image of the court and attacks against it, I also think that we have overcome the most difficult moments. Human rights are obviously less popular in times of economic and social crisis, of fight against terrorism, of increase in organized crime and traffic of all kinds. The consequences on the support to be given by the government and the public opinion to a body such as the European Court of Human Rights cannot, by any means, be neglected or underestimated. Nevertheless, a jurisdiction that has successfully protected rights and freedoms for more than 50 years, and whose influence and prestige spread beyond the borders of the continent, such a body should continue and cannot disappear. It is at least my profound conviction. I am very grateful for your attention.