Month: January 2019

Poll: Best and Worst ECtHR Judgment of 2018

Strasbourg Observers Uncategorized

Dear readers,

At the start of the New Year, we traditionally like to seize the moment and assess the past year of Strasbourg jurisprudence. For this purpose, we are hereby launching our poll for the best and worst ECtHR judgment of 2018. We would like to warmly encourage you, our readers, to participate in our annual vote.

Out of the 1,014 judgments delivered by the ECtHR in the course of 2018, our internal voting process resulted in a diverse selection of five judgments in each category. If you are, however, of the opinion that we missed out on an important case(s), you can also select other good or bad cases that we may have missed out using the “Other” option. You are welcome to share your reasons for voting via the comments section below.

The winners and losers will be announced in about a month.

To refresh your memory on the nominated judgments – or to introduce you to them – we have included brief summaries below the polls. Continue reading →

Murtazaliyeva v. Russia: on the examination of witnesses and the “corrosive expansion” of the overall fairness test

Laurens Lavrysen Murtazaliyeva v. Russia, Right to a Fair Trial

On 18 December, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the case of Murtazaliyeva v. Russia, finding no violation of the right to a fair trial in a case concerning the conviction of a Chechen woman for terrorist offences.  The most significant aspect of the judgment concerns the applicant’s complaint that the domestic courts’ refusal to call two defence witnesses violated Article 6 § 1 and § 3 (d) of the Convention.[1] As the Strasbourg case law was underdeveloped in this area, this case provided an important opportunity for the Court to clarify Convention standards.  Unfortunately, in doing so, the Grand Chamber yet again expanded the scope of the “overall fairness of the proceedings” test under Article 6 § 1, which now also serves as the final benchmark in this area. In this blog post, it will be argued that the increasing recourse by the Court to this test risks depriving defendants of meaningful procedural protection. Continue reading →

Activist’s conviction for hooliganism over ‘obscene’ protest violated Article 10 ECHR

Guest Blogger Freedom of Expression, Mătăsaru v. the Republic of Moldova

This blog post was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof

On 15 January 2019, the European Court’s Second Section unanimously found that an anti-corruption activist’s conviction for staging an “obscene” demonstration outside a prosecutor’s office, targeting a number of public officials, violated the activist’s freedom of expression. The Court in Mătăsaru v. the Republic of Moldova took the Moldovan courts to task for holding that Article 10 of the European Convention was not applicable to the activist’s protest, with the European Court reiterating that “expressive conduct” which shocks, offends or disturbs is fully protected under Article 10’s guarantee of freedom of expression. Continue reading →

Magyar Jeti Zrt v. Hungary: the Court provides legal certainty for journalists that use hyperlinks

Guest Blogger Uncategorized

By Carl Vander Maelen (research group Law & Technology, Ghent University)

On 4 December 2018 the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) found a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in Magyar Jeti Zrt v. Hungary. The case concerns the imposition of objective liability for posting a hyperlink leading to defamatory content, with the Court ultimately deciding that using hyperlinks does not simply equate to acts of dissemination. Instead, it requires a case-by-case assessment on the basis of five flexible criteria, resulting in a highly relevant and well-rounded judgment. Continue reading →

F.J.M. v. the United Kingdom: Judicial review of the proportionality of an eviction in private rental housing

Guest Blogger F.J.M. v. the United Kingdom, Right to Respect for Home

By Juan Carlos Benito Sánchez, PhD Researcher (FRESH) at F.R.S.-FNRS and UCLouvain (Belgium)

In its decision in F.J.M. v. the United Kingdom, delivered on 29 November 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (First Section) declared inadmissible a complaint of a violation of Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention. The applicant had been evicted following a possession order made by a court, but was not allowed to raise a defence on proportionality grounds. She claimed that the possession order was disproportionate in her case and that she should have been able to require the court to make a proportionality assessment before granting possession and evicting her. This case concerns no-fault evictions in the UK, also known as “Article 21 evictions.” Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 allows landlords to evict tenants who are not at fault without the need to provide any reasons, as long as they notify the tenant in writing at least two months in advance. Continue reading →

The Curious Case of Molla Sali v. Greece: Legal Pluralism Through the Lens of the ECtHR

Guest Blogger Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, Molla Sali v. Greece, Pluralism, Sharia law

By İlker Tsavousoglou, Doctoral Candidate at Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, Attorney at Law

On 19 December 2018, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgement on the case of Molla Sali v. Greece. In its ruling, the Grand Chamber unanimously held that there has been a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. The Applicant, Ms Chatitze Molla Sali, a Greek national and member of the Muslim minority of Western Thrace, was the beneficiary of her deceased husband’s estate based on a notarised testament of civil law. Following a domestic legal dispute, the Greek Court of Cassation found that the will drafted by a Greek of Muslim faith is devoid of effect. This was because, pursuant to a series of binding international agreements and the relevant domestic norms, the law applicable to the case was Islamic inheritance law instead of the relevant civil law. Continue reading →

New publication on the history of the ECHR in Belgium

Laurens Lavrysen Publication

I’m happy to announce the publication of my article “‘Strasbourg was something new, it was an adventure’ – A history of the Belgian cases before the European Court of Human Rights in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s” in the December edition of the Legal History Review. This article is the product of a research project, funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), I undertook on the history of the European Convention on Human Rights in Belgium. It is to a large extent based on oral history accounts of actors involved in Strasbourg litigation during the period under consideration. This is the abstract:

In recent years, a burgeoning literature has focused on the history of human rights in general and the history of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in particular. In order to understand how the ECHR gradually managed to gain authority in diverse national settings, it is necessary to complement transnational historical perspectives with studies of national reception histories. The present article approaches the history of the ECHR in Belgium by focusing on the history of the Belgian cases in Strasbourg, which have played an important role in contributing to the ‘discovery’ of the ECHR in the Belgian legal system. On the basis of interviews with actors involved in the early cases against Belgium, it was possible to determine their position in the Belgian legal landscape as well as their motivations and aspirations in going to Strasbourg. Moreover, these interviews allowed gaining insight into the circumstances out of which litigation against Belgium arose.