BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
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particular, they relied upon the arguments made by the applicants in the
third of the joined cases in support of their Article 6 complaint, and further
noted that the IPT could not make a Declaration of Incompatibility. The
latter in any case did not constitute an effective remedy, since it did not
result in the invalidation of the impugned legislation).
B. The submissions of the third party
243. In its third party intervention, the European Network of National
Human Rights Institutions (“ENNHRI”) submitted that the international
legal framework, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (“ICCPR”) and the American Convention on Human Rights
(“ACHR”), and case-law supported the contention that domestic remedies
did not have to be followed if they were not capable of providing an
effective remedy.
C. The Court’s assessment
1. General principles
244. It is a fundamental feature of the machinery of protection
established by the Convention that it is subsidiary to the national systems
safeguarding human rights. This Court is concerned with the supervision of
the implementation by Contracting States of their obligations under the
Convention. It should not take on the role of Contracting States, whose
responsibility it is to ensure that the fundamental rights and freedoms
enshrined therein are respected and protected on a domestic level (Vučković
and Others v. Serbia (preliminary objection) [GC], nos. 17153/11 and
29 others, § 69, 25 March 2014). However, the application of the rule must
make due allowance for the fact that it is being applied in the context of
machinery for the protection of human rights that the Contracting Parties
have agreed to set up and it must therefore be applied with some degree of
flexibility and without excessive formalism (see Vučković and Others, cited
above, § 76; see also Akdivar and Others v. Turkey, 16 September 1996,
§ 69, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-IV and Gough v. the United
Kingdom, no. 49327/11, § 140, 28 October 2014).
245. States are dispensed from answering before an international body
for their acts before they have had an opportunity to put matters right
through their own legal system, and those who wish to invoke the
supervisory jurisdiction of the Court as concerns complaints against a State
are thus obliged to use first the remedies provided by the national legal
system (see, among many authorities, Vučković and Others, cited above,
§ 70 and Akdivar and Others, cited above, § 65). The Court is not a court of
first instance; it does not have the capacity, nor is it appropriate to its