INTRODUCTION

The European Social Charter is the counterpart, in the field of economic and social rights, of the Council of Europe's much better known European Convention on Human Rights. The original version of the Charter was adopted in 1961. A number of further rights were added by a protocol in 1988. In 1996, a more thoroughgoing revision of the Charter was undertaken, when many of the existing rights were substantially amended and updated and a number of new rights added and included in a new treaty, the Revised European Social Charter. Nine States are parties to the European Social Charter only in its original form. A further seven States are parties to the Charter as amended by the 1988 Additional Protocol, while twenty-three States are parties to the Revised Charter. Thus, of the forty-six members of the Council of Europe, thirty-nine are parties to the Charter in one or other of its versions. The Charter provides two forms of machinery for seeking to ensure that its parties comply with their obligations under it. The first is a system of reporting, which has been in existence since the adoption of the Charter in 1961 and is obligatory for all parties to both versions of the Charter. The second compliance mechanism is a system of collective complaints that was introduced in 1995 and is optional. The two compliance systems are examined in more detail in Section 3 below.