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Protocol No. 8 to the Convention for the protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

(ETS No. 118)

Open for signature by the member States of the Council of Europe signatories to the Convention, in Vienna, on 19 March 1985.

Entry into force : 1 January 1990.
The original text of the Convention had been amended according to the text of Protocol No. 8 which entered into force on 1 January 1990. All provisions which had been amended or added by this Protocol are replaced by Protocol No. 11 (ETS No. 155), as from the date of its entry into force, on 1 November 1998.

Summary of the treaty

This Protocol gives to the European Commission of Human Rights the possibility to set up Chambers, each composed of at least seven members to examine individual petitions which can be dealt with on the basis of established case law or which raise no serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention.

This Protocol provides, too, that the Commission may set up committees, each composed of at least three members, with the power, exercisable by a unanimous vote, to declare inadmissible or strike from its list of cases a petition  when such a decision can be taken without further examination.

These provisions do not apply to petitions from States