February 12, 2021
By Dr Dimitrios Kagiaros, Assistant Professor in Public Law and Human Rights, University of Durham In its judgment in Lăcătuş v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) held that fining and imprisoning the applicant for begging amounted to a violation of Article 8 of the Convention. While the judgment raises many important issues […]
February 10, 2021
By Corina Heri, postdoctoral researcher at University of Zürich Begging can be framed in different ways. For city tourism officials, it’s a problem of branding. For local legislatures, it’s an opportunity to show a ‘tough on crime’ stance. For the people who beg themselves, begging can mean survival. But, until recently anyway, the European Court […]
June 20, 2018
By Laurens Lavrysen, postdoctoral researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium) A number of years ago, Eva Brems and I wrote an article “‘Don’t Use a Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut’: Less Restrictive Means in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights”. Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut […]