(ANSA) - STRASBOURG, MAY 4 - ''Italy in recent years has significantly improved the situation: from 17,000 pending appeals a few years ago to less than 3,000 today,'' said the outgoing president of the European Court of Human Rights, Guido Raimondi, at the end of his nine-year term. ''I leave the European Court of Human Rights in fairly good health but with an unresolved problem, that is the excessive amount of pending cases, which prevents us from giving a reasonable response to all those who turn to Strasbourg'', Raimondi said. ''The solution to this problem, which is the main problem for the Strasbourg Court - he added - is in the hands of the States and especially depends on those five countries from which 70% of the pending appeals arrive''. Raimondi underlined that ''an improvement in the implementation of the European convention on human rights at the national level, and especially in those five countries, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey, and Italy, could allow the Court to breathe''.

In order to achieve this goal, according to the president, it is absolutely necessary that the European and national judges work together to implement the European convention of human rights''.

Raimondi highlighted that, in order to enhance dialogue, the Strasbourg Court has two instruments: a digital platform that allows the national Supreme Courts and the Strasbourg Supreme Court to exchange information and the so-called protocol 16, which allows the Supreme Courts to ask the Strasbourg Court an opinion on the interpretation and implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights in a specific case. (ANSA).