March 13, 2018
This guest post was written by Ingrida Milkaite, Ghent University * On 30 January 2018 the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR, the Court) found a violation of Article 10 of the ECHR in Sekmadienis Ltd. v Lithuania. The main issue at hand was the question whether the national authorities provided ample explanation, consisting […]
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 […]
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 […]
October 13, 2017
On 21 September 2018, the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University is co-organizing a Workshop “Responding to Legitimacy Challenges and Choices for the European Court of Human Rights – Researchers Meet the Court” in Strasbourg. This is the call for papers (deadline 15 February 2018):
September 22, 2017
We are pleased to announce the recent publication of When Human Rights Clash at the European Court of Human Rights: Conflict or Harmony? by Oxford University Press (Stijn Smet and Eva Brems, eds). The volume tackles both the existence and resolution of human rights conflicts at the ECtHR. It contains contributions by Samantha Besson, Eva […]
May 30, 2017
By Fleur van Leeuwen, LL.M. Ph.D., human rights researcher and lecturer In March this year the European Court of Human Rights (Court) concluded that Italy had violated the human rights of Talpis, a Moldovan/Romanian woman living in Italy who had for years endured domestic abuse by the hands of her Moldovan husband. The violence had […]
May 02, 2017
By Dr. Elisabeth Lambert Abdelgawad Assoc. Prof. Edith Cowan University (Perth, Western Australia) The allocation of just satisfaction by the Court has become a more controversial issue, probably due to the increasing number of applications where very serious violations occurred. ‘Article 41 is probably one of the provisions which have raised the most important difficulties […]
April 10, 2017
I am happy to present a new book, Procedural Review in European Fundamental Rights Cases, which is a joint edition of prof Janneke Gerards (Utrecht University) and myself. It originated in an expert seminar we hosted jointly at Ghent University in 2015. We will be addressing this topic also in a panel at the next […]
March 30, 2017
By Fabienne Bretscher, PhD Student at the University of Zurich, Visiting Researcher at the Erasmus School of Law Rotterdam In a recent judgment, the ECtHR found that the refusal to grant Muslim students exemption from mandatory swimming classes in Swiss public schools did not amount to a violation of the right to freedom of religion […]
March 27, 2017
By Saïla Ouald-Chaib and Valeska David On 14 March 2017, the European Court of Justice issued two judgments, in the cases of Achbita and Bougnaoui concerning the manifestation of beliefs in the private workplace. From the perspective of inclusion and human rights law, the judgments are very disappointing. They basically legitimize and even provide a […]
March 20, 2017
by Dirk Voorhoof In its decision of 9 March 2017 in Rolf Anders Daniel Pihl v. Sweden, the ECtHR has clarified the limited liability of operators of websites or online platforms containing defamatory user-generated content. The Court’s decision is also to be situated in the current discussion on how to prevent or react on “fake […]
March 17, 2017
Is it permissible for States to categorically exempt women, juveniles and the elderly from being sentenced to life in prison? How should the Court handle the threat that States will ‘level down’ protection after it finds that a given measure is discriminatory? Those were the questions facing the Court’s Grand Chamber as it reached its […]
February 28, 2017
Dear readers, We are happy to announce the results of our poll on the best and worst ECtHR judgment of 2016. For an overview of the shortlist of candidates, including a motivation for selecting them, see our previous blog post published on the occasion of the opening of the polls. In light of the recent […]
January 31, 2017
The Strasbourg Observers are launching the annual poll for best and worst European Court of Human Rights judgment, 2016 edition! This year, the pre-selection of nominees was particularly challenging. A diverse batch of 28 (!) judgments received nominations from our blogging team at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. Ultimately, our internal voting process […]
October 13, 2016
By Corina Heri, PhD candidate at the University of Zürich / Visiting Scholar at Ghent University The concept of vulnerability has had wide-ranging effects for the Strasbourg jurisprudence, although the European Court of Human Rights, in what appears to be a matter of conscious choice,[1] has never defined it. Instead, the Court has opted for […]
October 10, 2016
By Malu Beijer, researcher Radboud University Nijmegen The concept of positive obligations has become a regular feature of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ever since the classic cases of Marckx v. Belgium, Airey v. Ireland and X. and Y. v. the Netherlands. The ECtHR has made very clear in […]
October 06, 2016
Guest post written by Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Law, Lund University Author of Human Trafficking and Slavery Reconsidered. Conceptual Limits and States’ Positive Obligations in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Currently working on a postdoctoral project entitled ‘Positive Obligations under the ECHR’ I certainly agree with Dr. Laurens Lavrysen’s assessment […]
October 04, 2016
I am proud to announce the publication of my PhD “Human Rights in a Positive State – Rethinking the Relationship between Positive and Negative Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights”. In my PhD, I have exhaustively studied the concept of positive obligations in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, […]
August 19, 2016
The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University[1] has submitted a third party intervention in the cases of Nikolay Alekseyev and Movement for Marriage Equality v. Russia and Nikolay Alekseyev and Others v. Russia. The case concerns the refusal by the Russian authorities to register two LGBT rights organisations because they were considered extremist organisations on […]
July 07, 2016
Last year, the Court issued the judgment of Oliari and Others v. Italy, described on this blog as “a stepping stone towards full legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Europe.” In this judgment the Court recognized that Article 8 ECHR encompasses a positive obligation on States to put in place a legal framework providing for […]