Strasbourg Observers
  • Laurens Lavrysen

Failure to protect minor against stepfather filming her naked violates Article 8: Grand Chamber agrees with our third party intervention in Söderman v. Sweden

November 14, 2013

On 12 November, the Grand Chamber issued its judgment in the case of Söderman v. Sweden (formerly known as E.S. v. Sweden), finding that Sweden had failed to comply with its positive obligation to protect the applicant’s right to respect for private life (Article 8 ECHR). According to the Grand Chamber, neither a criminal remedy […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Seminar Announcement: Stereotyping as a Human Rights Issue

November 11, 2013

The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University organizes a seminar on the topic of Stereotyping as a Human Rights Issue. The seminar will take place in Ghent on 4 December 2013. The purpose of this seminar is to explore the topic of stereotyping from a wide human rights perspective. We will address questions like: How […]

  • Weichie

Ricci v. Italy: Less Restrictive Alternatives in Exercising Freedom of Expression?

November 07, 2013

On 8 October 2013, the European Court of Human Rights released its judgment in the case of Ricci v. Italy. The case concerned a broadcast by the satirical television programme Striscia la notizia (on Canale 5), which aired an intercepted episode of another television programme, normally broadcast on the public network RAI. The applicant in Ricci […]

  • Guest Blogger

Qualification of news portal as publisher of users’ comment may have far-reaching consequences for online freedom of expression: Delfi AS v. Estonia

October 25, 2013

This guest post was written by Dirk Voorhoof* The European Court’s judgment of 10 October 2013 in Delfi AS v. Estonia has caused a lot of controversy in the world of online media, news portals, internet-groups and freedom of expression websites. Especially the criticism by Article 19, Index on Censorship and The Guardian (amongst others, […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

HIV-based employment discrimination: the ECtHR takes a strong stance in I.B. v. Greece

October 21, 2013

The Strasbourg Court has recently delivered its first judgment on the topic of HIV-based employment discrimination. I.B. v. Greece (judgment in French!) concerns a man who is HIV-positive and who was fired from his job, because his employer wished to keep the company running smoothly. What happened was that a group of I.B.’s co-workers, finding […]

  • Guest Blogger

Guest post on Epistatu v. Romania: a missed opportunity for clarification on (young) prisoners’ education

October 11, 2013

This guest post was written by Yousra Benfquih* In the case of Epistatu v. Romania of 24 September 2013 before the European Court of Human Rights, the applicant, Mr. Cristian Epistatu, a Romanian national and final-year high-school student born in 1990, was sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment by a judgment of 12 […]

  • Guest Blogger

Newspaper Editor Criminally Liable for Senator’s Op-Ed, But Prison Sentence Violated Article 10: Belpietro v. Italy

October 07, 2013

This guest post was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh* and Dirk Voorhoof** Nine years ago, in its landmark Cumpănă and Mazăre v. Romania judgment, a unanimous Grand Chamber laid down a rare absolute rule that prison sentences for defamation are never justified under Article 10 where the defamatory statements concern a matter of public interest. This […]

  • Weichie

New Article: ‘Conflicts between Absolute Rights: A Reply to Steven Greer’

August 22, 2013

I am very pleased to announce the publication of my article ‘Conflicts between Absolute Rights: A Reply to Steven Greer’ in the latest issue of Human Rights Law Review. The article can be found here. This is the abstract: Can absolute rights conflict? Is it permissible to torture a person to save others from torture? […]

  • Guest Blogger

Vona v Hungary: Freedom of association and assembly can be restricted to protect Minority Rights

August 07, 2013

This guest post was written by Judit Geller and Dezideriu Gergely, European Roma Rights Centre. In the case of Vona v Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) openly stood up against racism and hatred when it ruled that if an association’s activities amounts to widespread racist intimidation of a group then the association […]

  • Lourdes Peroni

Family Reunification in Berisha v. Switzerland: The Child’s Best Interests, Really?

August 01, 2013

This week, in a divided ruling, the Court rejected the case of Berisha v. Switzerland. By four votes to three, the Court held that the refusal of residence permits to the applicants’ three children – who were born in Kosovo and entered Switzerland illegally – did not violate the parents’ right to respect for family […]

  • Guest Blogger

UN immunity overrides ius cogens norms of international law

July 23, 2013

This guest post was written by Bella Murati, Ph.D. Candidate at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University.   July 2013 marks the 18th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, when in the period of 13-19 July 1995, more than 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslims were deliberately killed by Bosnian Serb forces. The case itself has been […]

  • Laurens Lavrysen

Transforming the right to property

July 17, 2013

Reading Strasbourg case-law on a systematic basis, I always feel uncomfortable when I see the Court’s expansive protection in the field of Article 1 Protocol 1. Basically, that is because I don’t really like the idea of a human right to property for a number of reasons. Firstly, a right to property takes the present […]

  • Guest Blogger

Article 10 of the Convention includes the right of access to data held by an intelligence agency

July 08, 2013

This post is written by Dirk Voorhoof, Ghent University.* In its judgment of 25 June 2013 in the case of Youth Initiative for Human Rights v. Serbia the European Court of Human Rights has recognised more explicitly than ever before the right of access to documents held by public authorities, based on Article 10 of […]

  • Maris Burbergs

Crossing the red line: application of the ‘significant disadvantage’ criterion in an Article 5§3 case

July 04, 2013

Recently, Judges De Gaetano and Ziemele did not hide their bewilderment with the Latvian government’s argument in favor of the application of the ‘significant disadvantage’ admissibility criterion in the case of Bannikov v. Latvia.

  • Guest Blogger

Gross v Switzerland: the Swiss regulation of assisted suicide infringes Article 8 ECHR

June 26, 2013

This guest post was written by Daria Sartori, Ph.D candidate in Criminal Law at Trento University (Italy). She is interested in the relationship between Criminal Law and Human Rights, and she is presently working in Italy and abroad on a research project about the Principle of Legality and the European Convention on Human Rights. Gross […]

  • Weichie

Manifestly ill-founded … by a majority

June 17, 2013

In this post I want to flag three inadmissibility decisions, delivered by the Court’s Chambers over the past few months, in which the applicant’s claims are declared manifestly ill-founded, by a majority. Like so many inadmissibility decisions, the three summarised below may have easily passed under the radar of many of our readers. These particular […]

  • Guest Blogger

N.K.M. v. Hungary: Heavy Tax Burden Makes Strasbourg Step In

June 10, 2013

This guest post was written by Ingrid Leijten, Ph.D. researcher and teaching assistant at the Leiden University Faculty of Law, Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law. The debate on the future of the European Court of Human Rights is often phrased in terms of the individual justice/constitutional justice dichotomy. In the recent case of N.K.M. […]

  • Laurens Lavrysen

The Court could provide more guidance in prisoner cases

May 30, 2013

When systematically reading the Court’s case-law, it becomes clear that poor conditions of detention remain one of the most dramatic human rights problems in contemporary Europe. The last decade, the Court has done a good job in interpreting Article 3 ECHR as to include a right for prisoners to be held in decent detention conditions. […]

  • Saïla Ouald Chaib

Mehmet Şentürk and Bekir Şentürk v. Turkey: The Court could have shown more empathy

May 24, 2013

Fellow observers of the Strasbourg case law will probably agree with me: when you systematically go through the Court’s case law you’re confronted with the most extraordinary facts that you would never have imagined. Horrible prison circumstances, ill-treatment and torture are sometimes described into utmost details. One can also not remain untouched by cases concerning […]

  • Saïla Ouald Chaib

New Publication: “Doing Minority Justice Through Procedural Fairness: Face Veil Bans in Europe”

May 15, 2013

Eva Brems and I are happy to announce the publication of our article entitled “Doing Minority Justice Through Procedural Fairness: Face Veil Bans in Europe” in the Journal of Muslims in Europe. In this article we examine the bans on face veils (better known as ‘Burqa bans’) from a procedural justice perspective. This piece also […]

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