Ombudsman Submits Report to the Committee of Ministers Regarding the Implementation of the ECHR Judgment in the Petrescu v. Portugal Group of Cases

On May 12, 2026, the Ombudsman submitted a communication to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in the context of monitoring the execution of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Petrescu v. Portugal group of cases.

Among other responsibilities, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe supervises the execution of ECHR decisions, monitoring the measures adopted by States to ensure full compliance with the judgments. As part of this supervision and monitoring process, National Human Rights Institutions—a role fulfilled in Portugal by the Ombudsman—may submit communications to the Committee.

In its judgment in the case of Petrescu v. Portugal, dated December 3, 2019, the Court found a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights due to poor conditions of detention, linked to a structural problem of overcrowding in more than half of Portuguese prisons (as of the date of that judgment) and recommended that the Portuguese State consider adopting general measures to ensure that prisoners are held in conditions consistent with the Convention. The ECHR also criticized the lack of an effective domestic remedy capable of putting an end to an alleged violation of prisoners’ rights or of allowing them to obtain a remedy or to enable them to secure an improvement in their conditions of detention.

In the report now submitted to the Committee of Ministers, the Ombudsman noted that the regular monitoring of conditions of detention—conducted both in the exercise of his mandate as a National Preventive Mechanism and in the context of investigating complaints filed by prisoners—leads to the conclusion that, despite the investment made in the refurbishment of some prisons, the systemic or structural problems identified in the ECtHR judgment persist, and no significant progress has been made regarding the issues that formed the basis of the previous decisions adopted by the Committee of Ministers in the implementation of the judgment.

The submitted communication is available for consultation here.