Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Right to respect for private life

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]