November 08, 2024
by Zoë Grossi and Pauline Charlotte Janssens Introduction On 23 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment in the case of Zăicescu and Fălticineanu v. Romania. The Court unanimously held that Romania violated Article 8 juncto Article 14 of the Convention by acquitting two high-ranking military officials previously convicted of war […]
November 05, 2024
By Ola Johan Settem On 24 September 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a Grand Chamber judgment in Fabbri and others v. San Marino (6319/21). The judgment concerns the rights of crime victims who attempt to pursue a civil claim against the offender by joining the criminal proceedings. The Grand Chamber clarifies […]
October 31, 2024
By Cathérine Van de Graaf, Eva Brems and Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez The Human Rights Centre[i] of Ghent University, joined by prof. Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez (Université Paris Nanterre) submitted a third party intervention to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) in the communicated case of F.D. and I.M. and three others v. France (38506/23, […]
October 29, 2024
By Sarah Ganty In Dian, the Court flushes the promise of the Lăcătuş judgment that ‘begging, as a form of the right to call on another person to obtain his or her assistance, must evidently be regarded as a basic freedom’ (§59) down the drain. The Court adopts a skewed vision of poverty, finding in […]
October 25, 2024
by Dr. iur. Yasir Gökce The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) pronounced recently an interesting judgment in the Yasak case, which appears to negate many of its conclusions in the landmark Yalcinkaya ruling. In the latter judgment, the Court characterised the practice of the Turkish judiciary to equate the alleged download or use of […]
October 22, 2024
By Isabel Kienzle and Jonathan Kießling For the first time, in M.A. and Z.R. v. Cyprus, the ECtHR has decided on a pushback case against Cyprus, addressing the island state’s practice to intercept and return migrants arriving from Lebanon without an individual assessment of their protection needs. As the parties provided conflicting accounts of the […]
October 18, 2024
Deekshitha Ganesan and Richard Köhler On 11 July 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) delivered an important decision in the case of W.W. v. Poland, finding that Polish prison authorities’ denial of access to hormone replacement therapy to a trans woman who was imprisoned violated Article 8 of the European Convention on […]
October 14, 2024
8-9 May 2025, Ghent Founded in April 2010, the Strasbourg Observers Blog is soon celebrating its 15th Anniversary. At this occasion, we are organizing a symposium in Ghent, Belgium. This symposium will be an occasion for real-life exchange between the blog’s readers, contributors and the current and former members of its editorial team. At the […]
October 11, 2024
Moritz Baumgärtel On 3 October 2024, the Fifth Section of the ECtHR, sitting as a Committee, delivered its judgment in the case of M.A. and others v. Greece. The Court found a violation of Article 3 ECHR due to the unacceptable living conditions in the Chios Vial and Samos Reception and Identification Centres (“RICs”). Together […]
October 04, 2024
1. Introduction On 29 August 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgement in Pasquinelli and others v. San Marino (24622/22) concerning COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines. The judgement, issued by the Court’s First Section, supplements the Court’s previous case law concerning COVID-19 vaccination and the pandemic in general (Communauté genevoise d’action syndicale (CGAS) […]
September 27, 2024
The Ghent University Human Rights Centre is proud to announce a new initiative! The team at the HRC has been scanning all communicated ECtHR cases regularly for a while. We find this helpful for our research, as well as for deciding on third party interventions. Starting from September, we will now be making these overviews […]
September 17, 2024
By Donatas Murauskas It is not just the individual restriction of rights that matters—the broader context in which they exist is equally crucial. This is the key lesson from the second review of Ms. Ždanoka’s attempts to overcome the restrictions on her candidacy for Parliamentary elections in Latvia. The recent judgment in Ždanoka v. Latvia […]
September 10, 2024
By Anca Ailincai Immunity of high-ranking State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction has been a topic of considerable debate for several years (e.g. here). The summer news has provided a rare opportunity to shed light on the more confidential issue of the immunities from jurisdiction and arrest of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the […]
September 06, 2024
Maja Lysienia For over three years now, crisis at the Belarusian border has been testing national authorities’ commitment to human rights. Since July 2021, Belarus has allowed for, facilitated or forced the irregular entry of third-country nationals to the EU. This new state conduct was quickly labelled as an “instrumentalization of migration”. Poland, Lithuania and […]
September 03, 2024
by Dr Dimitrios Kagiaros and Dr Inga Thiemann In M.A. and others v. France, the Court’s fifth section was called to decide on a particularly controversial issue: whether France’s 2016 law, which criminalised the purchase of sex without exception, was compatible with Articles 2, 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). […]
August 27, 2024
by Dirk Voorhoof 1. – Introduction In its judgment of the 4th June 2024 in the case of Sokolovskiy v. Russia the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealt with the issue of religious hate speech as a criminal offence interfering with the right to freedom of expression and information under Article 10 ECHR (see […]
August 23, 2024
By Júlia Miklasová This blog features an analysis of the common threads that link three recent ECtHR judgments related to the Russia-controlled parts of Georgian territory – the de facto entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia –with the Court’s existing case law. Particularly, the blog focuses on the conflation of the jurisdiction and attribution tests, […]
August 20, 2024
by dr Holly Greenwood Introduction The case of Nealon and Hallam v. the United Kingdom concerned a joint application from two individuals who were denied compensation for their wrongful convictions under the statutory scheme in England and Wales. The applicants argued s.133(1ZA) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, as amended by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime […]
August 16, 2024
By Marie-Sophie de Clippele Who owns the famous antique Statue of Victorious Youth on display in the Getty Museum (USA)? Does the Getty Trust have rightful ownership after nearly fifty years, or is it Italian public property, given Italy’s claim that it was discovered in its waters? The ECtHR carefully avoids a straight answer to […]
August 13, 2024
By Andrew Novak The decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Saakashvili v. Georgia provides a novel comparative analysis of the executive clemency power and an executive’s immunity from prosecution for misuse of that power. The debate over the nature of the pardon, filed by the former president of the Republic of Georgia, […]