EU: The European Court of Human Rights has a backlog of almost 66,000 cases, according to its president, Mr Lucius Wildhaber.
Speaking at a press conference in Strasbourg, Mr Wildhaber said the court was facing a critical year as it prepared to reform its structures and procedures.
"Under the current arrangements the court is required both to filter out manifestly inadmissable cases, and to adjudicate on the important cases raising new or serious issues under the Convention," he said.
"It is increasingly difficult to carry out both these functions effectively. The new protocol must tackle this problem."
In the past five years the court has delivered 3,308 judgments, compared with 389 in the preceding five years. Despite this increase in productivity from the court, the backlog has continued to grow, with 38,000 new applications in 2003 alone.
Following a reform of the court five years ago, there are now 45 full-time judges sitting in it from the member-states of the Council of Europe. Twenty of these are up for re-election later this year, including Ireland's Mr John Hedigan.
Proposals for further reform of the court have been under discussion since the establishment of a full-time panel of judges. At the centre of the planned reform is the issue of the filtering of cases.
The court is adamant that it needs to separate the filtering process from adjudication. However, there are some objections to any proposal to set up a separate body to carry out filtering work, mainly on the grounds of cost.
The court is also discussing the introduction of new admissability criteria, and sought to decline cases that did not raise substantive issues under the European Convention on Human Rights.