Applications to the ECHR, located in Strasbourg, France, for a determination that a fundamental right was violated by any one of the 27 member states of the European Union, or by any one of 20 other state parties, can be lodged by any individual or organisation. The applicant does not need to be a citizen of the respondent state, of the EU or of any state party, and applicant corporations do not need to be incorporated in Europe. An application should be lodged only after the applicant used the legal remedies available within the respondent state: the application must then be lodged within 6 months of the unsuccessful exhaustion of the domestic remedies. One should also know that the ECHR can only order the respondent state to pay monetary compensation to the applicant, it cannot overturn any decision of the authorities or courts in the respondent state. Proceedings before the ECHR typically last several years. In some cases the ECHR does not award any monetary satisfaction, it only establishes that a violation of fundamental rights did occur, which may, however entail some favourable legal consequences within the legal system of the respondent state, or may serve solely the purposes of moral satisfaction. 

The ECHR can only adjudicate violations of those fundamental rights that are explicitly guaranteed by the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms ratified by the state parties. These may correspond to or differ from fundamental rights guaranteed by the laws of the various state parties. The United Kingdom, while no longer a member of the European Union, remains a party to the Convention.

While applications may be lodged without the assistance of a lawyer, legal representation and the use of the ECHR's official languages (English and French) is compulsory once the ECHR communicates the application to the respondent state, which must then also respond to the allegation of violation in English or in French. Any lawyer practicing in any one of the 47 signatory states of the Convention may act as legal representative, regardless of the citizenship of the applicant, and regardless of which state is the respondent state in the case. Thus a Hungarian, Austrian, British or French lawyer may equally provide legal representation of, e.g., an Americal citizen lodging an application against any of the 47 signatory states of the Convention, but only against these states. The U.S.A. is not a signatory state, thus no application can be lodged against the U.S.A., but this does not limit the rights of American citizens to avail themselves of the protection of the Covention on the territory of any state that signed the Convention. If the lawyer representing the applicant does not have a practice territory of the respondent state, consultation with a lawyer that does have a practice there may be of advantage, but the ECHR's procedure allows joint representation by several lawyers as well.