6
9.
The CPT would also emphasise that a State visited will be aware of the thrust of the delegation's
findings long before it receives the visit report. Visiting delegations systematically meet the national authorities
concerned at the end of a visit, in order to give their preliminary impressions. Further, visiting delegations are
now having more frequent recourse to Article 8, paragraph 5, of the Convention and making "immediate
observations" on particularly urgent matters. In such cases, the State concerned will be requested to submit a
report on the issue in question within a specified time-limit (usually three months), it being understood that this
report shall be fully taken into account when the CPT draws up its visit report (see also paragraph 17 below).
10.
As regards the process of on-going dialogue, most States visited are presenting their interim and
follow-up reports broadly within the time limits set by the CPT. However, in certain cases, the time limit for
submission has been exceeded by six months or more. Such a situation is particularly unsatisfactory when it
concerns an interim report, which usually represents the first official reply to a visit report.
The CPT would add that it is far from satisfied with its own record as regards the on-going dialogue.
As a result of workload problems at the level of its Secretariat, the Committee continues to experience great
difficulties in responding in good time to interim and follow-up reports presented by States visited. This is all
the more worrying given that the gap between periodic visits to a given country is considerably longer than the
Committee would wish.
In this context, the CPT must stress that, in the absence of a sustained post-visit on-going dialogue, the
momentum for change generated by a visit will almost certainly be frittered away.
11.
In the course of 1994, the CPT's reports on its visits to Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Portugal,
San Marino and the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) were published, pursuant to Article 11 (2) of the
Convention. Further, a number of interim reports (Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal and the
United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)) and follow-up reports (Finland, France and Switzerland) in response to
CPT visit reports were published during the year1.
Twenty-one of the thirty seven visit reports drawn up to date by the CPT have been published, and
there is good reason to believe that most of the remaining sixteen (a number of which have only recently been
submitted to the Governments concerned) will be published in the not too distant future. In fact, it is fair to say
that publication of the CPT's visit reports has become the norm, non-publication the exception; a development
which might well not have been expected by the authors of the Convention. Naturally, the CPT welcomes this
situation.
1
Further, in the first half of 1995, the CPT's reports on its periodic visits to Italy and
Liechtenstein have been published (in both cases together with the interim report of the
national authorities), as have the report on the Committee's ad hoc visit to Sweden and the
interim report drawn up by the Belgian authorities.