The Council of Europe has declared that the European Court of Human Rights should not interfere in matters concerning individual countries' traditions and cultures, such as the display of crucifixes in public institutions.
Justice ministers of the 47 countries represented in the council discussed the issue of crucifixes after it was brought up by Justice and Home Affairs Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and his Lithuanian counterpart, Maris Riekstins, at a recent meeting in Interlaken, Switzerland.
During the council meeting, held last week, the ministers reached a common agreement that the ECHR's decisions should be limited and should not impinge on matters of culture or tradition.
Diplomatic sources said that, while this was not spelt out in the council's policy declaration, made during the meeting, one of the points was being interpreted as such. This point "invites" the court "to apply in a uniform and rigorous manner the criteria concerning admissibility and jurisdiction".
This is understood as meaning that the court should stick to its competences and not interfere in matters of national policy, such as cultural and traditional customs. However, the same sources noted that the decision did not bind the court, which remained supreme.
A press spokesman from the council, nonetheless, explained that the resolution was significant because it was an agreement by all justice ministers.
The meeting was intended to set the course for the ECHR's reform and address the need for speed and efficiency of the court, especially as backlogs have been accumulating in the past years.
Addressing the meeting, Dr Mifsud Bonnici brought up the recent judgment in which the court decided against Italy's use of crucifixes in public offices and schools.
Vatican officials had denounced the ruling saying it was not in the court's hands to rule on a matter of Italian tradition.
Dr Mifsud Bonnici spoke about the perception that the court was not "sufficiently sensitive to the unique distinguishing cultural characteristics which foster national identities".
Building on that, the Lithuanian minister declared that the court must work to provide "clear, precise, unambiguous and comprehensible" rulings for everyone. This did not happen in the Italian school ruling, she said, as reported by the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano.
Dr Mifsud Bonnici also spoke about the nomination of judges to the ECHR.
"We have to ensure that member states nominate their most qualified candidates... competence should remain the dominant and overriding criterion in this regard," he said in a veiled reference to the fact that gender should not be an issue.
Malta has spent the last years trying to persuade the ECHR to choose someone from its three male nominees. But the court has insisted that one of them must be a woman.
Asked why he felt the need to raise these issues, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said: "They are aimed to show directly and clearly our concerns and are intended to indicate to the court what we would look forward to in its future work."
According to a statement released by the Council of Europe, the meeting was "crowned a success" with the issue of the joint policy declaration.
According to this declaration, members agreed that it was necessary to reach a balance between the incoming cases and the settled ones. Moreover, the national implementation of the court's judgments should be improved and the Committee of Ministers should guarantee an effective supervision of the implementation process, among other things.