February 20, 2020
By Jasper Krommendijk (Radboud University, the Netherlands) On 13 February 2020, the ECtHR found for the fourth time ever a violation of Article 6(1) ECHR for a failure of the highest national court to give proper reasons for its refusal to refer preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in Sanofi […]
February 07, 2020
Ingrida Milkaite is a PhD researcher in the research group Law & Technology at Ghent University, Belgium. She is working on the research project ‘A children’s rights perspective on privacy and data protection in the digital age’ (Ghent University, Special Research Fund) and is a member of the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Law and […]
January 31, 2020
By Prof Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou (University of Liverpool), Editor-in-Chief of the European Convention on Human Rights Law Review It has been discussed on various levels that weak enforcement of the ECtHR judgments is a major drawback of the whole system. The lack of political will of the governments of the Contracting Parties to the Convention to […]
January 29, 2020
Dear readers, As the Grand Chamber made clear in the (in)famous Lautsi case, “the decision whether or not to perpetuate a tradition falls in principle within the margin of appreciation”. Exercising our discretion in this respect, we hereby decide to perpetuate our tradition of celebrating the start of the New Year with the launch of […]
January 24, 2020
The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, better known as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), was opened for signature in Rome on 4 November 1950. The Convention will thus be 70 next autumn. Ghent University’s Human Rights Centre wishes to take the opportunity of this anniversary to take stock […]
January 23, 2020
By Dr. Ingrid Leijten, Assistant Professor at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University On December 20th of last year, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in the case of Urgenda v. de Staat der Nederlanden, confirming the finding of the Court of Appeal that the State violates articles 2 and 8 ECHR […]
January 17, 2020
Beril Önder: PhD Candidate, University of Strasbourg (Institut de Recherches Carré de Malberg) and Ghent University (Human Rights Centre) The case of Razvozzhayev v. Russia and Ukraine and Udaltsov v. Russia[1] concerned the conviction of two men for organising “mass disorder” in a political rally at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on 6 May 2012. The […]
January 08, 2020
By Valérie Junod and Olivier Simon On November 26. 2019, the ECtHR issued a 6 to 1 judgment finding that Russia had not breached the right of the complainants when it denied them access to methadone and buprenorphine (these two medicines are hereafter abbreviated to M/B) for treating their duly diagnosed opioid dependence syndrome (ODS). […]
December 23, 2019
By Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Lund University) The ECtHR has been for a long time criticized for its approach to immigration detention that diverts from the generally applicable principles to deprivation of liberty in other contexts. As Cathryn Costello has observed in her article Immigration Detention: The Ground beneath our Feet, […]
December 19, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof In Tagiyev and Huseynov v. Azerbaijan, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that the conviction and imprisonment of Azerbaijani journalist Rafig Nazir oglu Tagiye, and editor Samir Sadagat oglu Huseynov, for incitement to religious hatred, violated their right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. […]
December 16, 2019
By Massimo Frigo (Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurists) On 14 October, the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) of Spain convicted 12 people in connection with their part in the organisation on 1 October 2017 of a referendum on Catalonian independence, that was conducted despite having been declared illegal by the Constitutional Court. […]
December 12, 2019
By Emre Turkut (PhD Researcher at Ghent University and DAAD Visiting Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin) On 10 December 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) delivered its much-awaited decision in the case of Osman Kavala v. Turkey, an application lodged by a human rights defender and philanthropist to challenge […]
December 06, 2019
Fotis Bregiannis is a doctoral researcher in the field of European Labour Law at UCLouvain. He works at the social law department of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Research in Law, Enterprise and Society (CRIDES) and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on EU legal instruments imposing information-related obligations on MNEs (EWC Directive, 2014/95 Directive). Argyro […]
December 02, 2019
By Katarina Frostell, Project Manager and PhD Candidate, Institute for Human Rights, Åbo Akademi University, Finland On 24 October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in J.D. and A. v. the United Kingdom, in the so-called bedroom tax case. In its judgment, the Court applied a discrimination analysis on the reduction […]
November 29, 2019
It doesn’t happen every day that a new journal is launched in the area of human rights law, let alone one that focuses exclusively on European Convention law. Looking forward to reading the new ECHR Law Review, edited by regular Strasbourg Observers blogger Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou and by Vassilis Tzevelekos. More info on the aim of […]
November 27, 2019
Effie Fokas is a political scientist and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, Research Associate of the London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory, and member of the Henry Luce/Leadership 100 project on Orthodoxy and Human Rights (Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University). She was also Principal Investigator of […]
November 19, 2019
Argyro Chatzinikolaou is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Law & Technology research group and the Human Rights Centre at Ghent University. She is currently working on the research project “Minors and online sexual acts: a study of legal qualifications and regulatory approaches from a children’s rights perspective”. In Pryanishnikov v Russia, a […]
November 14, 2019
Jessica Gavron, Legal, Director, European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, London It is widely recognised that the European Court of Human Rights is under huge pressure to reduce its caseload, currently standing at almost 60,000 cases. To this end, the Court has been increasing the number of cases resolved by friendly settlements and unilateral declarations and […]
November 04, 2019
By Dirk Voorhoof and Ronan Ó Fathaigh In Szurovecz v. Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights has held that a refusal to grant a journalist access to an asylum-seeker ‘reception centre’ in Hungary violated his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. The ECtHR emphasised that newsgathering, including ‘first-hand’ observation by a […]
October 31, 2019
By Linda Hamid, Research Fellow at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies – Institute for International Law, KU Leuven On 15 October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment in the case of Grama and Dîrul v. The Republic of Moldova and Russia, whereby it found a violation of Art. 1, […]