The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) plays a crucial role in the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals. The goal of this Court is to resolve complaints in which these individuals allege that the State of their citizenship fails to perform the obligations arising from the provisions of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 (the Convention).

The ECtHR assesses the reasonableness of the term for “final” resolution of a legal conflict, and includes therein the time needed to implement the judgment. Currently, excessively long periods needed to implement the judgments which award payments of certain amounts to plaintiffs at the expense of budgetary funds is still a sensitive issue for Bulgaria as well as for Ukraine. As a respective confirmation of such a situation for Ukraine, the author mentions ECtHR’s judgment passed in 2017 in the case of Burmych and Others v. Ukraine, which actually determined the fate of 12,148 applications filed to the Court by Ukrainian citizens who complained of the violation of their right to a fair trial because of the failure to implement final judgments passed by national courts.

The purpose of the article is to determine the impact of ECtHR’s judgments on the rulemaking and practice of national courts. The experience of Bulgaria is taken as the object of study.

The author analyzes two pilot ECtHR judgments which found that Bulgarian courts breached the requirements of Art. 6, § 1 of the Convention. After these judgments became final, the Bulgarian Parliament amended the laws “On the Judiciary” and “On the Liability of the State and Communities for Damage Caused” to incorporate the provisions which are aimed at avoiding any future violations similar to those found by ECtHR. The author studies these legislative changes and the practice of their application with the aim of illustrating that ECtHR judgments have an efficient impact on the improvement of national legal rules. In summary, the author maintains that the mechanisms of compensation described in the article – the administrative one (after amendments to the Law “On the Judiciary”) and the judicial one (after amendments to the Law “On Liability of the State and Communities for Damage Caused”) precisely meet the ECHR criteria.