Month: January 2021

Poll: Best and Worst ECtHR Judgment of 2020

Strasbourg Observers Uncategorized

Dear readers,

At Strasbourg Observers, we always like to seize the opportunity of the beginning of the new year to look back at the previous one. 2020 has been a strange year. Last year, many members from our scholarly community dropped their ordinary research activities to keep us, via Strasbourg Observers, up to do date on the human rights implications of the developing Covid-19 crisis. At the same time, despite the logistical challenges of running a court in times of pandemic, the Strasbourg Court has continued its activities and eventually still managed to deliver no less than 1,901 judgments and 37,289 decisions (see the Court’s Annual Report, in which President Spano rightly praises the ‘exceptional commitment’ shown by the Court’s staff to adapt to the circumstances). And we have continued to watch the Court!

Having tried our best to keep you up to date on last year’s Strasbourg jurisprudence, we would now like to invite you, our readers, to participate in our annual poll for best and worst ECtHR judgment. Where did the Court provide a welcome contribution to the development of the jurisprudence or to the safeguarding of human rights in Europe? Or perhaps rather, where did it fail to live up to our expectations in this regard?

After an internal voting process, we have made a shortlist 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 vote for other good or bad cases using the “Other” option. You are welcome to share your reasons for voting via the comments section below.

Continue reading →

X and Y v North Macedonia: A missed opportunity to improve the case law on anti-Roma custodial violence

Guest Blogger Article 1 of Protocol No. 12, Article 3, Roma Rights, X and Y v. North Macedonia

By Emma Várnagy (Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Law, Safety and Governance, The Hague University of Applied Sciences)

The case of X and Y v North Macedonia (Application no. 173/17) concerns the beating of two Roma youths by the police and the subsequent inaction concerning the investigation of their ill-treatment. In fact, it has a strikingly similar fact pattern to a number of cases throughout the last two decades, such as Assenov and Others v Bulgaria (1998); Bekos and Koutropoulos v Greece (2005); Stefanou v Greece (2010); or A.P. v Slovakia (2020). These cases all concern the apprehension of Roma minors for suspected theft and their ill-treatment in police custody. The novelty of X and Y is that it is the first time the discrimination claim was also raised under Article 1 of Protocol No. 12, thereby offering an opportunity that the Court could have taken to formulate its approach to racist violence at the hands of public authorities.

Continue reading →

Usmanov v. Russia: a confusing turn in the right direction?

Guest Blogger Nationality, Right to Respect for Private Life, Usmanov v. Russia

By Louise Reyntjens (Leuven Centre for Public Law, KULeuven)

On the 22nd of December 2020, the Strasbourg Court delivered its latest judgment in its case law on citizenship deprivation, a sensitive issue the Court is increasingly confronted with. Ever since the “European war on terror” has been declared, governments have rediscovered citizenship deprivation as a counterterrorism measure; a most cunning tool to shape national societies and exclude the “unwanted”, i.e. (convicted/suspected) terrorists. Over the past couple of years, those cases have started to find their way to the Strasbourg Court, with many fundamental rights questions surrounding them. Most of the judgments delivered on this particular issue were rather disappointing and failed to offer much protection to the individual(s) involved. The judgment of Usmanov v. Russia on the other hand, is indicative of a careful turnaround in this regard. It does however also cause some confusion in how the Court handles cases of deprivation, warranting further clarification (perhaps ideally by the Grand Chamber?).

Continue reading →

A misconceived balance by the domestic courts in Dupate v. Latvia

Guest Blogger Dupate v. Latvia, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Press, Right to Respect for Private Life

By Evangellos Orestis Vouvonikos (Phd in Public Law, University of Athens, Attorney in Law)

Introduction

On the 19th November 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in Dupate v. Latvia (application no. 18068/11). In this case, the ECtHR dealt with an alleged violation of respect of the applicant’s private life (Article 8 of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)). The appeal was based on the publication of an article in a popular magazine, in which the applicant was photographed without her consent, while exiting a maternity clinic, after giving birth to her second child. Unlike the Latvian courts, the ECtHR assessed that there had been a violation of Article 8 ECHR. According to the Court, the Latvian authorities had not satisfactorily balanced the freedom of press against the protection of private life.  

Continue reading →

B. and C. v Switzerland: between concealment of sexual orientation and risk assessment in Article 3 cases

Guest Blogger B. and C. v. Switzerland, LGBT Rights, Non-refoulement, procedural obligations

Blog post by Riccardo Viviani, LL.M., and Denise Venturi, Ph.D. Candidate in Law, KU Leuven, Research Unit Public Law*

On 17 November 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in B. and C. v Switzerland. The case concerned the risk of deportation and ill-treatment upon return to the Gambia of a homosexual applicant**, whose request for family reunification with his partner, a Swiss national, had been rejected. The Court unanimously found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention, following the inadequate evaluation of the risk of inhuman and degrading treatment and of relevant availability of State protection in the Gambia.

For the first time, in a non-refoulement case concerning a risk of ill-treatment for reasons of sexual orientation, the Court clarified that the lack of an adequate risk assessment by domestic authorities would breach Article 3. So far, similar cases have been either struck out or have been declared inadmissible by Strasbourg judges.

This contribution will offer a brief analysis of the present judgment and will situate it in the wider context of the existing European case-law, namely the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and other precedents in which the ECtHR has dealt with Article 3 claims based on sexual orientation.

Continue reading →

Honner v France: Damage Prevention and/or Damage Control?

Guest Blogger Honner v. France, LGBT Rights, Right to Respect for Family Life

By Alice Margaria (Senior Research Fellow, Department of ‘Law & Anthropology’, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

In 2020, an application concerning the parental rights of a co-mother was to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the ECtHR’s response. In Honner v France, the Court held that the refusal to grant contact rights to a social mother in respect of her child who had been born to her former female partner using assisted reproductive technologies in Belgium did not violate her right to respect for family life. This judgment evokes different feelings, prima facie conflicting but eventually pointing to a consistent picture of the ECtHR: that of an international court with strong expressive powers, which is expected to be at the same time cautious and leading the development of human rights standards in Europe and beyond. 

Continue reading →

When States Steal Christmas: the Citizens’ Right to Return to the Country of Citizenship in Time of Pandemic

Guest Blogger Covid-19, Freedom of movement

By Andrea Preziosi (University of Birmingham – School of Law)

Prologue

When I started writing this post, I was stuck in Birmingham few days before Christmas instead of being on a flight to Italy to spend the holiday break with my family. Needless to say, it was not my decision, but the result of the decision of the Italian government, as well as many other governments around the world, to ban flights from the UK following the reported news of a new variant of Covid-19 detected in south-east England that threatened to spread anywhere else. Frustration, anger and sadness are not enough to describe my feelings when the news broke out. I thought that Italy had disrupted my plan to visit my  family and condemned me to pass Christmas in total loneliness, as if the forced isolation lasting almost one year had not been enough.

Continue reading →

Insulting accusation of domestic violence

Guest Blogger Domestic Violence, Freedom of Expression, Right to Reputation, Tölle v. Croatia

By Dirk Voorhoof and Inger Høedt-Rasmussen (*)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), delivered an interesting judgment in the case of Tölle v. Croatia about insulting allegations of domestic violence. In a newspaper article a father accused an association to be responsible for his child’s abduction by the mother. The president of this association providing support for women victims of violence replied in a radio-interview that her organisation was not involved in the daughter’s abduction and that the man had violently abused his wife. That was also the reason why mother and daughter had fled the country. The association’s president was subsequently convicted for the criminal offence of insult. The ECtHR found that this criminal conviction amounted to a violation of the association’s president’s freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Court finds the criminal conviction for insult a sort of censorship, discouraging the promotion for support of victims of domestic violence.

Continue reading →