November 23, 2023
by Sarah Ganty and Dimitry V. Kochenov[i] In Valiullina and others v. Latvia and Džibuti and others v. Latvia, the Fifth Section of the European Court of Human Rights unanimously approved of further restrictions on Russian-language education in Latvia, thereby depriving a huge proportion of the population of the Republic of Latvia of education in […]
September 12, 2023
by Benjamin Nurkić In the recently announced judgment in the case of Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 regarding the complaint about the composition of the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of B&H, and regarding […]
October 04, 2022
By Daniel Simon and Mark Klaassen There are no reliable tools to determine a person’s exact chronological age. And yet, legal safeguards for asylum seekers depend on it to a large extent. The way states determine whether an asylum seeker is a minor or not remains a widely controversial topic. In fear of abuse of […]
August 05, 2022
By Sarah Ganty and Dimitry V. Kochenov Savickis and others v. Latvia is about pension rights. The Grand Chamber found that direct difference in treatment on the grounds of nationality in pensions is lawful if someone decided not to naturalize in the country of residence, in casu in the Latvian Republic. The majority innovates on […]
April 15, 2021
By Margarita S. Ilieva, a strategic equality and human rights litigator with extensive experience in hate speech. She litigated Behar, Budinova and Panayotova and Others v. Bulgaria, and other landmark cases like Yordanova v. Bulgaria and Karaahmed v. Bulgaria. The author was the architect of the cases discussed below, having brought them domestically in 2005 and lodged them with the […]
August 01, 2019
By Kristin Henrard, Professor of Fundamental Rights, Erasmus Law School, Rotterdam On 16 May 2019 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) delivered its judgement in Tasev v North Macedonia regarding the refusal of the authorities to change the ethnic affiliation of a judge in the electoral roll of judges. The Court […]
July 03, 2014
By Saïla Ouald Chaib and Lourdes Peroni This week, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights published its long-expected judgment in S.A.S. v. France. The case concerns a ban on the wearing of face veils in the public space. Although the outcome of such highly debated cases is always unpredictable, we hoped […]
May 19, 2014
This guest post was written by Lieselot Verdonck. Lieselot is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Human Rights Centre, Faculty of Law of Ghent University. More information on the author can be found here. The relationship between State and Church has always drawn much interest. It constitutes an inherently sensitive and political issue, which touches upon […]
November 29, 2013
On Wednesday, our research team attended the Grand Chamber hearing at the European Court of Human Rights in the case of S.A.S. v. France, in which we submitted a third party intervention on behalf of the Ghent University Human Rights Centre. The case concerns the French law banning the face veil, a highly debated piece […]
November 25, 2013
This guest post was written by Judit Geller* and Adam Weiss** One month ago, the European Court condemned France under Article 8 for violating the rights of travellers (gens du voyage) by ordering their eviction (see the judgment here). The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) made written submissions as a third-party intervener four and a […]
November 19, 2013
The name Mann Singh will probably ring a bell with those who are familiar with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In Mann Singh v. France (ECHR, 13/11/2008/, no 4479/07), the Strasbourg Court was confronted with the question whether the French obligation to appear bareheaded on photographs on identity documents was […]
February 14, 2013
In a recent decision, the Human Rights Committee of the UN found a violation of the right to freedom of religion in a case concerning the famous and highly debated French law of 2004 that prohibits the wearing of religious garment in public schools. Accordingly the UN Committee called upon France to revisit its legislation. […]
April 05, 2012
This post was co-authored by Saïla Ouald Chaib and Lourdes Peroni This week, in a 4-3 judgment, the Court ruled against a violation of the freedom of religion of Mr. Sessa, a lawyer and member of the Jewish faith, unable to attend a court hearing scheduled on Yom Kippur. The case is Francesco Sessa v. […]
December 06, 2011
In a decision of 28 June (COHRE v. France, no. 63/2010), which was only recently made public, the European Committee of Social Rights has found the French zero tolerance policy towards East European Roma living in illegal camps to be in violation of the European Social Charter. The case, which was lodged by the NGO […]
May 19, 2011
The Council of Europe recently released a report on diversity in Europe, entitled “Living together: Combining diversity and freedom in 21st-century Europe”, drawn up by the ‘Group of Eminent Persons of the Council of Europe’. The report aims to negotiate “the challenges arising from the resurgence of intolerance and discrimination in Europe”. It “assesses the […]
February 22, 2011
This post is co-authored by Lourdes Peroni and Alexandra Timmer In an inadmissibility decision that might have gone unnoticed by many, the Court has recently ruled in an interesting case, Horie v UK. The case involves a “New Age Traveler” who complained of an impediment on her ability to pursue a nomadic way of life. […]
October 27, 2010
The case Konstantin Markin v. Russia was already discussed in a previous post written by my colleague Alexandra who, from a gender perspective, found it a very interesting case, worth applauding on several points. I want to add an additional point from the perspective of religious minority rights. When reading the case I was surprised […]
September 17, 2010
From a minority perspective, this week was not a good week in Belgium. On Wednesday, a television broadcast proved that employment agencies cooperate actively with employers who don’t want to hire people with a foreign background (in Belgium the so-called “allochtonen”). An undercover journalist who posed as an employer searching for new employees, asked the […]
September 15, 2010
We have all read about the utterly unacceptable treatment of Roma by Sarkozy’s government. And while France holds firm to its “return policy”, thankfully the EU has not turned a blind eye to this discriminatory practice, violating both the freedom of movement within the EU and the prohibition of collective expulsions. First, the European Parliament […]
April 12, 2010
Note: following a helpful comment, this post has been edited to correct a mistake on my behalf. In this blog entry I would like to focus on the Court’s interpretation of the concept ’statistically relevant’. In Oršuš and others v. Croatia, the Court held the following regarding the statistical evidence adduced by the applicants: “These […]