Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Right to Private Life

  • Sarah Trotter

The construction of a right to birth registration in European human rights law: the case of G.T.B. v Spain

February 23, 2024

By Dr Sarah Trotter On 16 November 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (‘the ECtHR’) handed down its judgment in G.T.B. v Spain. It is a judgment that constitutes a significant moment in the development of the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the […]

  • Sabrina Praduroux

Is it Safe to Bury the Truth under the Family Tree? The ECtHR’s Response in Gauvin-Fournis and Silliau v France

December 12, 2023

By Sabrina Praduroux There have been longstanding ethical concerns regarding the anonymity of gamete donors in the context of medically-assisted reproduction techniques. In recent years, the increasing importance placed on the right to know one’s biological origins as a fundamental aspect of personal identity has also raised questions about the principle of donor anonymity from […]

  • Dr. Betül Durmuş

Judicial Stereotypes on Female Sexuality and Reproduction: Nurcan Bayraktar v Türkiye

November 02, 2023

By Dr. Betül Durmuş I remember the first time I learned about Article 132 of the Turkish Civil Code (‘TCC’) in the family law classes in Turkey. This provision imposes a 300-day waiting period for divorced women to remarry unless they medically prove they are not pregnant. As a young woman and a law student, […]

  • Harriet Ní Chinnéide

Hurbain v Belgium: Navigating the Intersection of Privacy and Press Freedom in the Digital Age

October 03, 2023

By Harriet Ní Chinnéide In the wake of the digital revolution, questions surrounding the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten have come to the fore. With the digitalisation of press archives, what once required extensive archival research can now be discovered – even sometimes accidentally – through a simple online search. This […]

  • Eva Sevrin

The exceptional case of Ghadamian v Switzerland: Private life and the obligation to regularize migrants

August 29, 2023

By Eva Sevrin Ghadamian v Switzerland is one of the rare cases where the European Court of Human Rights decides that the State is under a positive obligation to regularize an irregularly residing migrant. Even more rare perhaps, is the fact that the Court finds this obligation under the right to private life (Article 8). […]

  • Giulio Fedele

More protection than recognition for same-sex couples in Buhuceanu and Others v Romania

May 30, 2023

by Giulio Fedele, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, giulio.fedele@uniroma1.it With its latest decision in the case of Buhuceanu and Others v. Romania on 23 May 2023, the European Court of Human Rights returned to the subject of same-sex couples and legal recognition. To no-one’s surprise, the Court confirmed what it had already established just five […]

  • Maija Dahlberg

More human rights at the cost of the state sovereignty? Clarifying the scope of applicability of Article 8 ECHR to social welfare benefits in Beeler v Switzerland

February 21, 2023

By Maija Dahlberg In Beeler v Switzerland the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had to balance between its far-reaching human rights interpretations and the principle of state sovereignty. Concretely, the case concerned an interesting interpretative question whether to extend the scope of applicability of Article 8 ECHR to social welfare benefits.

  • Zoe L. Tongue and Lewis Graham

Y.P. v Russia: Sterilisation Without Consent, Article 3, and Weak Reproductive Rights at the ECtHR

September 30, 2022

by Zoe L. Tongue and Lewis Graham On the 20th September 2022, the European Court of Human Rights handed down its judgment in Y.P. v Russia, a case concerning the non-consensual sterilisation of a 28-year-old women during a Caesarean section. The Court’s dismissal of the arguments made under Article 3 appears out of step with […]

  • Andrea Broderick

Arnar Helgi Lárusson v. Iceland: Muddying the Waters on Inaccessibility of Public Buildings

August 30, 2022

By Andrea Broderick On 31 May 2022, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) published its ruling in Arnar Helgi Lárusson v. Iceland. The applicant is a wheelchair user who brought a complaint at the domestic and European levels regarding the lack of accessibility of buildings that housed arts and cultural centres run by the municipality where […]

  • Sarah Ganty

Surrogacy as citizenship deprivation in S.-H. v. Poland

March 14, 2022

By Sarah Ganty One might expect that with the emphasis placed on the best interests of the child in recent years (even decades), the issue of surrogacy would not be so haphazardly approached by the ECtHR. And yet the patchwork quilt of protection afforded to children (and their parents) born from surrogacy is strikingly insufficient, […]

  • Dr. Eliza Watt

Much Ado About Mass Surveillance – the ECtHR Grand Chamber ‘Opens the Gates of an Electronic “Big Brother” in Europe’ in Big Brother Watch v UK

June 28, 2021

By Dr Eliza Watt, researcher in cyber law, lecturer in law, Middlesex University, London, UK. On 25 May 2021 the Grand Chamber (GC) of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, the Court) handed down its much-anticipated decision in Big Brother Watch and Others v the UK (Big Brother Watch). The case is of vital […]

  • Ina Xhepa

Xhoxhaj v. Albania: The Aftermath of the Vetting Process in Albania

June 25, 2021

By Ina Xhepa, lawyer and Executive Director at the European Centre (Albania) Over the last decade, the Albanian judiciary was considered to be one of the weakest aspects of the functioning of the rule of law in the country. Field surveys revealed high levels of corruption and led to the loss of citizen’s trust towards […]

  • Guest Blogger

Pişkin v. Turkey: Observations on the failure of the Lawfulness Test and the Engel Criteria within the context of the Turkish Purge

March 29, 2021

By Hakan Kaplankaya, former Turkish diplomat, jurist, INSTITUDE member On 15 December 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR/the Court) delivered its first judgment regarding the purge of a public employee as per the first of the notorious emergency legislative decrees adopted by the Turkish government in the aftermath of the controversial coup attempt […]

  • Guest Blogger

The right to privacy used as a modern pillory in L.B. v. Hungary

March 01, 2021

By Liesa Keunen, PhD researcher at Ghent and Antwerp University, Belgium. Liesa Keunen is working on the research project ‘Tax audits on big data: exploring the legitimacy and limits in light of the prohibition of fishing expeditions’ (Ghent & Antwerp University, FWO). She is also a member of the research group Law & Technology, the […]

  • Guest Blogger

X and Y v. Romania: the ‘impossible dilemma’ reasoning applied to gender affirming surgery as a requirement for gender recognition

February 25, 2021

By Sarah Schoentjes, PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, and Dr. Pieter Cannoot, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and Visiting Professor at the University of Antwerp In the case of X and Y v. Romania, the ECtHR has declared one more abusive requirement for gender recognition […]

  • Guest Blogger

Is begging speech? Assessing Judge Keller’s concurring opinion in Lăcătuş v. Switzerland

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 […]

  • Corina Heri

Beg your Pardon!: Criminalisation of Poverty and the Human Right to Beg in Lăcătuş v. Switzerland

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 […]

  • Guest Blogger

Regulating Signals intelligence

July 13, 2020

Iain Cameron is professor in public international law at Uppsala University Introduction For European states, an important factor pushing towards better regulation of security agencies generally has been the ECHR. The work of “signals intelligence” agencies (collecting metadata and the content of electronic mail and voice communications) came to prominence following the allegations of “mass […]

  • Guest Blogger

The ECHR and the right to have a criminal record and a drink-drive history erased

May 20, 2020

By Jurij Toplak The ECHR’s Article 8 guarantees a right to have data related to criminal procedures reviewed and, after some time and in most cases, removed. In this blog post, I will first summarise the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or “the Court”) on the retention, review, and removal of […]

  • Guest Blogger

Indiscriminate Covid-19 location tracking (Part II): Can pandemic-related derogations be an opportunity to circumvent Strasbourg’s scrutiny?

May 05, 2020

By Ilia Siatitsa and Ioannis Kouvakas Yesterday, we argued that blanket mobile phone location tracking measures that aim at containing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic cannot be regarded as strictly necessary due to their indiscriminate nature and the existence of less intrusive alternatives with potentially similar effectiveness. In this second blog post, we reflect […]

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