November 27, 2025
Dr. Christian J. Tams
From 2-4 December 2025, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe will meet to discuss compliance with ECtHR judgments. The agenda for the meeting is dense. States increasingly struggle to (or choose not to) ‘abide by the final judgment of the Court in any case in which they are parties’ (Article 46 § 1 ECHR); this increases pressure on the Committee, which, under Article 46 § 2 of the Convention, is tasked to ‘supervise [the] execution’ of such judgments. But one matter stands out from the Committee‘s busy agenda: this is the question of Turkey‘s compliance with the Grand Chamber judgment of 10 May 2001 in the inter-State case of Cyprus v Turkey, and more specifically the Court‘s findings on property rights of individuals displaced as a result of the Turkish invasion of the island and the subsequent establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TNRC). It stands out, not only because the Northern Cyprus problem is one of the most high-profile disputes on which the ECtHR has regularly pronounced, but also because the debates within the Committee are peculiar and protracted. For years, Turkey and Cyprus have submitted legal arguments to the Committee on the question of compliance with the 2001 Grand Chamber judgment. These arguments raise important questions of principle, both about the scope of Turkey’s duty to comply and about the Convention’s supervisory mechanism set out in Article 46. The Committee has not been able to come to an agreement so far. In fact, as Cyprus acknowledged in a recent memorandum, the debates seem to have reached a ‘deadlock’ widely felt to be ‘frustrating’.
In this post, I introduce where things stand ahead of the December debates in the Committee of Ministers and identify the source of the current deadlock. I then suggest that the Committee of Ministers might break this deadlock by requesting the Court to clarify the scope of Turkey’s obligations under the dedicated procedure of Article 46 § 3 ECHR. This procedure (which involves a referral of matters back to the Court) so far has been largely ignored by commentators. However, Article 46 § 3 ECHR deserves a closer look: it envisages an interesting interplay between the Committee of Ministers and the Court in the post-adjudication phase, an interplay that finds no equivalent in other systems of international dispute settlement. As discussed below, in the unusual context of the Cyprus v. Turkey case, this particular procedure could help unblock the Committee debates and clarify the scope of Turkey’s duty to comply with the 2001 Grand Chamber judgment.
In the long list of significant ECtHR pronouncements on the Cyprus conflict, the inter-State judgment of 10 May 2001 in the case of Cyprus v Turkey is considered a landmark. In it, a Grand Chamber of the Court found that, through the long-standing occupation of Northern Cyprus, Turkey had violated the rights of Greek Cypriot missing persons and their relatives, as well as the rights of displaced persons to their home and property. Specifically, as the Court held in section III.4 of the operative provisions, Turkey had denied Greek Cypriot property owners access to their properties as well as compensation; this amounted to a ‘continuing violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1’.
The implications of this finding were initially teased out in decisions on individual complaints. In the pilot judgment in Xenides-Arestis, the Court required Turkey to ‘introduce a remedy which secures the effective protection’ of the property rights of Greek Cypriots. In response, the TNRC established the Immovable Property Commission (“IPC”), as a legal mechanism for addressing property claims of Greek Cypriots. (See Law no. 67/2005 of the TNRC.) The working of the IPC was then considered in the Court’s subsequent case-law. Of particular relevance, for present purposes, is the finding in Demopoulos, that proceedings before the IPC ‘provid[e] an accessible and effective framework of redress in respect of complaints about interferences with the property owned by Greek Cypriots’ .
According to Turkey, this finding implied that any violation of the property rights of Greek Cypriots had been remedied, meaning that the Committee could close its supervision of the matter. Cyprus disagreed (and continues to disagree). Pursuing its inter-State case, it requested a declaratory judgment affirming Turkey’s ongoing duty (notwithstanding Demopoulos) to act against ‘the unlawful sale and exploitation of Greek Cypriot homes and property in the northern part of Cyprus’.
In its judgment on just satisfaction of 12 May 2014 (see comment on this blog), the Court saw no need to render a declaratory judgment, as Turkey was in any event ‘bound by Article 46 and thus by its international obligations to comply with the principal [2001 Grand Chamber] judgment’. In a passage that would prompt much debate (para. 63), the Court went on to make three further relevant findings, stating that:
(i) the 2001 holding ‘has not yet been complied with’;
(ii) such compliance could not ‘be consistent with any possible permission, participation, acquiescence or otherwise complicity in any unlawful sale or exploitation of Greek Cypriot Greek homes and property in the northern part of Cyprus’; and
(iii) the Demopoulos judgment ‘cannot be considered. on its own, to dispose of the question of Turkey’s compliance’ with section III.4 of the Grand Chamber judgment.
Para. 63 of the Court’s judgment on just satisfaction clearly seemed to vindicate Cyprus’s position. Nonetheless, Turkey has continued to argue that the Committee should close its supervision of the property matter. And for around a decade, the two sides have continued to advance their positions in debates in the Committee of Ministers.
The central lines of argument in the Committee are by now well-entrenched. Cyprus insists that the ‘Turkification’ of Greek Cypriot properties in Northern Cyprus continues unabated, notwithstanding the work of the IPC, and that Turkey thus continues to be in breach of its obligation to ’abide by the final judgment’ under Article 46 § 1 ECHR. Cyprus draws attention to the handling of other cases involving systematic breaches of property rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, such as the recent Committee decision calling on Russia to “immediately stop illegal expropriation [of property] and revert its consequences”: in Cyprus’s view, Turkey must provide remedies and act against on-going breaches – a view which Cyprus sees reflected in para. 63 of the 2014 judgment on just satisfaction, as summarised above. (For a recent account of Cyprus’s position, see here.)
For Turkey, by contrast, the IPC is the appropriate and sufficient response to the Court’s judgments: its establishment and functioning address the property breach, and nothing more needs to be done. (See here for an account of Turkey’s position.) In support of its position, Turkey refers to decisions in which the Court has rejected challenges to the IPC, beginning with Demopoulos, and following with Meleagrou, Joannou and most recently K.V. Mediterranean Tours Limited. (These decisions have been critically reviewed on this blog.) But significantly, Turkey also engages with the above-quoted findings of the 2014 judgment on just satisfaction, and notably the Court’s statement that Turkey’s involvement ‘in any unlawful sale or exploitation of Greek Cypriot homes and property in the northern part of Cyprus’ would not be ‘consistent with’ its obligations under the 2001 Grand Chamber judgment. This statement, argues Turkey, has a narrow scope: the reference to ‘unlawful sale or exploitation’ in its view only covers forms of interference with Greek Cypriot property that are not in conformity with the IPC law. On that basis, Turkey sees nothing in para. 63 to contradict its view. (Turkey has made relatively little attempt to reconcile its positions with the other statements made by the Court in para. 63, namely that the 2001 judgment ‘has not yet been complied with’ and that Demopoulos ‘cannot be considered, on its own, to dispose of the question of Turkey’s compliance’.)
Since 2014, the Committee of Ministers has heard variations of both positions on numerous occasions. So far, neither side has been able to convince the Committee of Ministers. Turkey’s position has been supported by the Secretariat, which has encouraged the Committee to close the matter. But motions to close supervision have so far failed to be carried. Cyprus, in turn, has failed to get the Committee to agree on firmer measures of supervision. Both sides seem able to block the other – but unable to move forward. It is, as noted above, a ‘frustrating deadlock’.
So what could be done? It seems unlikely that the next round of Committee debates will bring a breakthrough. So perhaps it is time for a change of gear.
Cyprus v Turkey, of course, is not the only protracted matter facing the Committee of Ministers. But the debate is peculiar in that both sides rely on their particular reading of the Court’s jurisprudence, and notably on the meaning of the Court’s statements in para. 63 of the just satisfaction judgment of 2014. This makes the matter peculiar – but it could also point to a way out. Given that rival interpretations of the Court‘s jurisprudence shape the parties’ positions, it would seem useful to refer the matter back to the Court and ask it to clarify the meaning of its prior judgments. Such a referral back to the Court is not the normal way for the Committee of Ministers to deal with protracted matters of judgment execution; in fact, it has never been tried out before. In this case, though, a referral has been on the agenda for a while. It was initially mooted by the Secretariat, which, soon after the Court’s just satisfaction judgment of 2014, considered that the Court might be asked the Court to clarify the meaning of para. 63. More recently, this approach has been proposed by Cyprus and developed in a legal opinion by the Court’s former President, Róbert Spanó.
The proposal to refer the matter back to the Court is not based on the imagination of creative lawyers, but on the text of the Convention. Pursuant to Article 46 § 3, the Committee of Ministers can refer matters back to the Court ‘if it considers that the supervision of the execution of a final judgment is hindered by a problem of interpretation of the judgment’. This option – unlike the procedure for a request for interpretation under Article 79 of the Rules of Court, which parties have to initiate within one year – is not subject to a temporal limitation: even today, almost a quarter-century after the 2001 judgment in Cyprus v. Turkey and more than a decade after the judgment on just satisfaction, the Committee could request the Court for ‘a ruling on the question of interpretation’.
Commentators have at times expressed caution about Article 46 § 3, which is said not to fit easily into the Convention’s architecture of enforcement control which relies on the Committee and purposefully does not vest the Court with jurisdiction over non-compliance cases. But this concern ignores the fact that, when revising the Convention regime in the 1990s, the drafters introduced a referral option for a particular reason. Article 46 § 3 was to permit the Committee of Ministers to overcome difficulties arising ‘due to disagreement as to the interpretation of judgments’ (See para. 96 of the Explanatory Report). In this particular case, the referral would enable the Court to offer an authentic interpretation of its decisions; its ‘reply settles any argument concerning the judgment’s exact meaning’ (para 96) – and this reply would then guide the Committee’s further work. The drafters cautioned the Committee to ‘use this possibility sparingly, to avoid overburdening the Court’ and required that any referral be decided by a two-thirds majority. But they consciously introduced the possibility of a referral to address a particular problem.
Article 46 § 3, of course, is a discretionary provision. The Committee is empowered, but not required, to use it. However, in light of the preceding discussion, there would seem to be strong arguments to use it in this case. Three points can be made in support of this position:
One, it is clear that, as regards property rights of Greek Cypriots, the Committee is faced with the situation that Article 46 § 3 seeks to address, i.e. ‘the supervision of the execution of a final judgment is hindered’. It has been ‘hindered’ for over a decade, as Cyprus and Turkey have advanced variations of their arguments sketched out above, precluding the Committee from taking meaningful action.
Two, unlike in other protracted debates about compliance with ECtHR rulings, the different positions adopted by the parties are directly related to rival readings of the Court’s jurisprudence. As indicated above, Cyprus relies on para. 63 of the just satisfaction judgment, which, in its view, clarifies that Turkey remains non-compliant with the 2001 judgment. Turkey, in turn, draws attention to decisions such as Demopoulos and K.V. Mediterranean Tours Limited and argues that the reference to ‘unlawful sales’ of property in para. 63 only refers to sales not covered by the IPC law: on that basis, it claims to have complied with the 2001 judgment already. Observers may disagree on the relative merits of these approaches. (As indicated above, Turkey seems hard-pressed to explain how its reading could be reconciled with the Court’s express view, in 2014, that the 2001 judgment ‘has not yet been complied with’.) But within the Committee, two readings of the Court’s jurisprudence have been advanced, and they are mutually exclusive. This seems precisely the setting for which Article 46 § 3 was designed.
Third, one might ask what the alternatives are to referring the matter to the Court. It seems there are few. The Committee at its upcoming December meeting is likely to be exposed to another round of Cyprus and Turkey rehashing their well-known arguments. This is an unattractive prospect. Faced with it, there is a strong case for a new approach that could change the dynamics. As with every new approach, critics might worry that a referral decision could create a dangerous precedent – so that in the future, the Committee would regularly be expected to refer matters to the Court. But this ‘floodgate argument’ is of dubious value – and not only because resisting new approaches risks inertia. It is of dubious value because the Cyprus v. Turkey case is special – the problems in the Committee result from a manifest ‘disagreement as to the interpretation’ of the Court’s case-law. By referring this special matter to the Court, the Committee would not tie its own hands. Rather, by making use of a long-overlooked procedural option, it could break the deadlock. After years of dithering, this would seem an attractive way forward.
Strasbourg Observers is an academic blog that discusses recent developments at the European Court of Human Rights. The editorial team of Strasbourg Observers is based at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and the Centre for Government and Law of Hasselt University.
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