The Strasbourg Barometer: Assessing the State of Human Rights Protection in South-East Europe in 2025

In 2025, the European Convention on Human Rights commemorated its 75th anniversary. For the legal community, this milestone is not merely ceremonial; it represents three-quarters of a century of building a “common public order” across the continent. Yet, for the nations of South-East Europe, the data from this anniversary year serves less as a celebration and more as a rigorous audit of their domestic legal systems.

A comprehensive review of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Annual Report¹ and Case-Law Overview for 2025² reveals that while the aggregate caseload is decreasing, the region faces persistent, systemic deficits. The Court in Strasbourg continues to function not just as a safeguard of last resort. It often acts as a primary adjudicator for issues that should have been resolved at home. This reality challenges the fundamental principle of subsidiarity.

The Metrics of Judicial Health and Pending Applications

The health of a national legal system is inversely proportional to the number of its citizens seeking redress internationally. As of December 31, 2025, approximately 53,450 applications were pending before the Court. While this represents an 11 percent reduction from the previous year, the distribution of these cases highlights a fracture in the European legal space.

Romania remains the primary contributor to the docket of the Court from the region with 2,489 pending cases. Such a volume can be either explained with a raised awareness that remedy also can be sought in Strasbourg, but such very high numbers rather suggest structural and repetitive violations and not just isolated errors. These specifically concern the length of proceedings and the restitution of property. Similarly, the backlog of 1,141 applications for Moldova is disproportionately high for a population of 2.4 million. This indicates a justice system under severe stress. Serbia follows with 803 pending cases, while North Macedonia has 513 and Croatia 456. At the lower end, Bulgaria has 308 pending applications, Albania 239, Montenegro 139, and Bosnia-Herzegovina just 70.

However, the most accurate indicator of systemic distress is the application density. This is defined as the number of applications per capita. By this metric, Montenegro presents the most critical data point in the region with 2.76 applications per 10,000 inhabitants. When contrasted with a benchmark jurisdiction like Denmark, which has 0.15 applications per 10,000 inhabitants, the disparity becomes a clear indictment of the availability and effectiveness of domestic remedies in Montenegro. Croatia, despite recent improvements, still registers 1.96 per 10,000. Moldova follows closely at 1.97, which for a country of just 2.4 million inhabitants is an exceptionally high figure. Serbia sits at 1.71. Although Romania’s rate of 1.03 ECtHR applications per 10,000 inhabitants appears modest compared to the aforementioned, this figure offers little reassurance. Because of the country’s large population, the per capita rate masks an alarmingly high absolute volume of cases. Bulgaria, often perceived as a moderate performer in the region, reaches the lowest rate in the region: 0.83. For comparison, Estonia, a post-Soviet state that has successfully built strong domestic institutions, stands at just 0.76 per 10,000, essentially on par with Bulgaria but far below the rest of the region. To put these numbers into perspective: Denmark, used here as a benchmark for a well-functioning system, records just 0.15 applications per 10,000 inhabitants. Even Bulgaria, the best performer in the region, exceeds that benchmark by a factor of more than five.

A crucial methodological limitation applies to these figures. The pending applications statistic is, in a sense, a rearview mirror. Cases decided by the Court in 2025 were typically filed years earlier, after domestic remedies had already been exhausted. This means the violations adjudicated in Strasbourg today often reflect the state of a legal system as it was five, sometimes ten years ago. The three-year trend analysis of application rates, discussed below, is somewhat more responsive to recent developments, but even this metric carries a built-in time lag. In other words, a country that has undertaken genuine judicial reform in the past two or three years may not yet see the statistical benefits reflected in the Strasbourg data. Conversely, a recent deterioration in domestic standards may not yet show up in the Court’s caseload. This temporal dimension should be kept in mind throughout the analysis that follows.

Trajectories of Reform and the Effectiveness of Domestic Remedies

The data from 2023 to 2025 offers a longitudinal view of legal reform. The trend lines suggest that in some jurisdictions domestic courts are beginning to shoulder their proper burden. Croatia has demonstrated the most robust improvement with a 25 percent reduction in its application rate over three years. This statistical decline in new cases implies that Croatian courts are increasingly applying Convention standards domestically. They are thereby filtering out potential cases before they reach Strasbourg. North Macedonia and Romania have achieved similar progress as they recorded reductions of approximately 30 percent in their respective rates.

These improving trend lines may, at first glance, seem to sit uneasily with the still-alarming per-capita figures described above. How can Romania show a 30 percent decline in new cases and yet remain roughly seven times above the Danish benchmark (see above)? The answer lies in the baseline. Countries like Romania, Croatia, and Serbia started from such elevated levels that even significant percentage improvements leave them far below the standards of well-functioning systems. A 25 percent reduction in Croatia’s rate, for instance, brought it from 2.63 to 1.96 cases per 10,000 inhabitants, which still means that its citizens turn to Strasbourg at a rate more than 13 times that of Denmark. The direction of travel is encouraging, but the distance still to be covered is substantial. 

Conversely, the data for Moldova reveals volatility. A sharp improvement in 2024 was followed by a regression in 2025, with the rate climbing back from 1.50 to 1.97 per 10,000. This fluctuation often signals legal uncertainty or inconsistent application of the law. Montenegro, meanwhile, presents an essentially flat trajectory at the top end, moving from 2.80 in 2023 to 2.76 in 2025. No meaningful reform effect is visible. Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina show rising (i.e. worsening) trends, though from lower bases, which may reflect either growing awareness of the Strasbourg remedy or an actual deterioration of domestic conditions.

Procedural Justice and the Crisis of Article 6

The most pervasive issue identified in the 2025 report is the violation of Article 6. This is the Right to a Fair Trial. This provision is the cornerstone of the rule of law because without it substantive rights are unenforceable.

The statistics for Albania are particularly stark. Every single violation found against the state in 2025 concerned also fair trial guarantees: 12 out of 12. This points to a systemic failure to provide procedural security. Moldova faces a similar crisis where Article 6 violations constitute nearly 75 percent of its total judgments, with 33 separate findings under various limbs of the provision. Serbia recorded 10 Article 6 violations, Montenegro 3 out of 3, and Bulgaria and Croatia 5 each.

The specific legal failures cited include excessive length of proceedings, insufficient reasoning in judgments, and a lack of judicial independence. These are not mere technicalities. They represent a failure of the state to provide a competent forum for dispute resolution.

Substantive Rights Regarding Liberty, Security, and Property

Beyond procedural flaws, the 2025 case law highlights grave breaches of substantive human rights.

Regarding the Right to Liberty under Article 5, Serbia recorded nine violations which is the highest in the region. This trend suggests a systemic misuse of pretrial detention measures and a failure of judicial review to effectively challenge the deprivation of liberty. Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania each recorded single Article 5 violations, indicating less systemic but still notable problems with liberty guarantees.

The protection of property under Protocol 1 Article 1 remains a contentious legal issue. Moldova with 21 violations and Serbia with 7 violations continue to struggle with issues related to expropriation and the non-enforcement of final judgments concerning property restitution. Bulgaria recorded 5 property violations, Romania 3, and Croatia and North Macedonia 2 each. These figures reflect a region-wide pattern of unlawful expropriation and inadequate compensation that has persisted for years.

Most concerning are the findings against Romania regarding the Right to Life and Prohibition of Torture under Articles 2 and 3. The Court found seven violations of the Right to Life and five regarding the Prohibition of Torture. These judgments typically arise from failures to conduct effective investigations into deaths or ill treatment by state agents. This points to serious gaps in accountability within law enforcement structures. Moldova, Serbia, and Bulgaria also recorded multiple Article 3 violations (4, 4, and 3 respectively), indicating that ill-treatment and poor detention conditions remain widespread concerns across the region. Additionally, Moldova was the only country to record violations of Article 4, the prohibition of slavery and forced labour, pointing to potential issues with human trafficking or labour exploitation that demand urgent attention.

Emerging Jurisprudence on Standards for Democracy and Integrity

The docket of the Court for 2025 also produced significant case law that clarifies the standards for democratic governance and public integrity in the region.

Bulgaria recorded six violations regarding the right to free elections under Protocol 1 Article 3. This was one of the highest figures across all categories for any single country in the region and indicates systemic defects in its electoral framework. Meanwhile, in Kovacevic v. Bosnia and Herzegovina³, although the application was declared inadmissible due to abuse of rights, the proceedings underscored the continuing constitutional deadlock regarding ethnic eligibility requirements for high office.

The Grand Chamber judgment in Danilet v. Romania⁴ set a critical precedent regarding the freedom of expression for the judiciary. The Court ruled that sanctions imposed on a judge for social media posts criticizing the justice system violated Article 10. This decision establishes a pressing social need test. It protects judges who participate in public debates on the rule of law provided their impartiality remains intact. The judgment defined five criteria for domestic courts to apply when assessing such cases: the content and form of the remarks, the context and capacity in which the judge spoke, the consequences for the judiciary, the severity of the sanction, and the procedural safeguards afforded.

In Cavca v. Moldova⁵, the Court addressed the procedural limits of integrity tests for public officials. It found a violation of Article 6 where an official dismissed after a staged bribery scenario was denied the opportunity to challenge the evidence or claim entrapment in an adversarial proceeding. This ruling reinforces that anti-corruption measures cannot bypass due process rights.

Conclusion and the Imperative of Subsidiarity

The 2025 report serves as a reminder that the European human rights system is predicated on the principle of subsidiarity. The primary responsibility for protecting rights lies with national authorities rather than the judges in Strasbourg. The comparative success of legal systems like Denmark or Estonia is not due to an absence of rights violations. It is due to their capacity to remedy those violations domestically.

For South-East Europe, the path forward is clear. The reduction in case numbers in countries like Croatia and North Macedonia demonstrates that progress is achievable. However, until fair trial guarantees are strictly observed and domestic remedies become truly effective, the Strasbourg Court will remain, in some cases and jurisdictions, the de facto court of last resort for protecting human rights effectively in the region. And while the statistics analysed here necessarily reflect the past more than the present, they remain the most authoritative measure we have. The real test of whether ongoing reforms are working will show itself in the Strasbourg data of the years to come.

1. Available at: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/annual-report-2025-eng
2. Available at: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/overview-2025-eng
3. See details in: Kovacevic v. Bosnia and Herzegovina [GC], no. 43651/22, 25 June 2025.
4. See details in: Danilet v. Romania [GC], no. 16915/21, 15 December 2025.
5. See details in: Cavca v. the Republic of Moldova, no. 21766/22, 9 January 2025.