February 26, 2018
By Lize R. Glas, assistant professor of European law, Radboud University When making public its priorities for its chairmanship on 13 November 2017, Denmark already announced that finding ‘new ways’ to ensure a ‘strengthened dialogue’ between the states parties, domestic courts and the Court would be a ‘key objective’. As could be expected therefore, the […]
February 25, 2018
By Janneke Gerards (professor of fundamental rights law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands) & Sarah Lambrecht (affiliated researcher, Research Group Government and Law, UAntwerp, Belgium and law clerk at the Belgian Constitutional Court) It is a well-known fact that the ECHR system of fundamental rights protection is almost continually under construction. Since the major overhaul of […]
February 23, 2018
By Sam MacMahon Baldwin, Attorney-at-law (Advokat) at Gorrissen Federspiel 2017 ended with the Strasbourg Court reaffirming the decision from Orlandi and Others v. Italy that Member States must recognize and protect same-sex unions – although the Court did not require recognition of actual same-sex marriage. Now well into the new year, it is the EU […]
February 21, 2018
By Annick Pijnenburg, PhD researcher at Tilburg University 25 January 2018 is a date to remember for European refugee lawyers. In Luxembourg, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Case C-473/16 that an asylum seeker may not be subjected to a psychological test in order to determine his sexual orientation. At the […]
February 19, 2018
By Pieter Cannoot, PhD researcher, Human Rights Centre (Ghent University) The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University[1] has submitted a third party intervention in the case of R.L. and P.O. v. Russia. The case concerns the refusal by the Russian authorities to legally recognise the gender identity of the applicants, who are two transmen. According […]
February 16, 2018
This guest post was written by Cathérine Van de Graaf, a PhD student at Ghent University. In a judgment on 18 January 2018, the fifth Chamber of the ECtHR found no violation of the right to private and family life in Fédération Nationale des Syndicats Sportifs (FNASS) and Others v France. The case concerned the […]
February 14, 2018
Dear readers, About a month ago, we presented you with a shortlist of candidates for the awards of best and worst ECtHR judgments of 2017 (see our previous blog post). In the meantime, you, our readers have voted in massive numbers. It is our pleasure to announce the results of the poll today. In the […]
February 08, 2018
In the Lopes de Sousa Fernandes v. Portugal judgment of 19 December, the Grand Chamber made an attempt to clarify the Court’s case law in the area of medical negligence. Traditionally, the Court has examined cases of death resulting from alleged medical negligence almost exclusively from the viewpoint of the procedural obligations under Article 2. […]
February 02, 2018
By Claire Poppelwell-Scevak, PhD FWO Fellow, Gent University From first glance, the decision of Orlandi and Others v Italy on 14 December 2017, may appear as a step in the direction of same-sex couples being afforded the protection of Article 12 ECHR – the right to marry. However, when one digs a little deeper into […]
January 25, 2018
On 15 February 2018, an expert will be held at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, focusing on that evergreen of ECHR scholarship: the margin of appreciation. The speakers include scholars of ECHR law – including the Strasbourg Observer’s Professor Eva Brems – and legal theory, as well as ECtHR Judge Paul Lemmens. […]
January 19, 2018
This guest post was written by Ingrida Milkaite, Ghent University* On 7 November 2017 the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR, the Court) found a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The main issue at hand was the Court’s assessment of whether the right balance between the applicant’s right […]
January 11, 2018
Dear readers, We, from Strasbourg Observers, would like to wish you all the best for 2018. Following our yearly tradition, the start of the new year is a good opportunity to invite you, our readers, to retrospectively assess the ECtHR’s work of the past year. For this purpose, we are hereby launching our poll for […]
January 03, 2018
By Amy McEwan-Strand and Prof. Marit Skivenes, Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism (University of Bergen) In a case of adoption without parental consent – Strand and Lobben v. Norway – the Fifth Section of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) did not find a violation of Article 8 of either the […]
December 20, 2017
By Lize R. Glas, assistant professor of European law, Radboud University For over seven years, the Committee of Ministers (Committee) has had at its disposal the ‘nuclear option’ of launching infringement proceedings against a state that refuses to execute a Strasbourg judgment. On 5 December 2017, it decided to go nuclear for the first time, […]
December 15, 2017
By Corina Heri, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam On 28 November, the Grand Chamber issued a judgment in Merabishvili v. Georgia. Twelve days earlier, the Fifth Section issued its judgment in Ilgar Mammadov (No. 2) v. Azerbaijan. Both judgments concern, among other provisions of the ECHR, its often-overlooked Article 18, which prohibits States […]
December 11, 2017
In Hamidović v Bosnia and Herzegovina (5 December 2017), the Fourth Section of the Court found a violation of articles 9 and 14 ECHR on account of the punishment of a witness for wearing an Islamic skullcap in the courtroom. As almost all claims for accommodation of Islamic religious practice have failed before the Court, […]
December 08, 2017
By Jonathan McCully (Media Legal Defence Initiative / Columbia Global Freedom of Expression) On 28 November 2017, in MAC TV v. Slovakia, the European Court of Human Rights (European Court) found a violation of the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the Convention where the Broadcasting Council of Slovakia had fined a […]
December 05, 2017
By Claire Poppelwell-Scevak, FWO Research Fellow, Human Rights Centre (Ghent University) On 26 October 2017 the European Court of Human Rights held in Ratzenböck and Seydl v Austria that Austria’s registered partnership law, which is only open to homosexual couples, did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights by denying this registered partnership to […]
November 30, 2017
By Dr Ben Warwick (University of Birmingham) Krajnc v Slovenia continues the ECtHR’s grappling with the interaction between Convention rights and public finance questions. Relying on Article 1, Protocol 1 the applicant successfully argued that a law change, which resulted in a halving of his disability allowance, was a breach of the Convention. The case […]
November 27, 2017
By Benoit Dhondt, Belgian lawyer specialized in migration and refugee law. As a teaching assistant, he is also connected to the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, more specifically its Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic. Recently the ECtHR took an umpteenth swing at the question to what extent the family life and private life […]