Cases

N.D. and N.T. v. Spain: defining Strasbourg’s position on push backs at land borders?

Guest Blogger Asylum Seekers, ND and NT v. Spain, Prohibition of Collective Expulsion

By Hanaa Hakiki

On 13 February 2020, the Court published its long awaited Grand Chamber judgment in the case of N.D. and N.T. v. Spain, the first case addressing the Spanish policy of immediate expulsions at the Ceuta and Melilla enclaves. In a speech the Court’s president had announced that the judgment would be “instrumental to the issue of push backs” in Europe, the most “burning issue in European politics today” (M.A. v Lithuania; concurring opinion, §1).  Legally, the case of N.D. and N.T. addressed the applicability of the prohibition of collective expulsions to push backs at European land borders. The judgement has already been analysed in detail and widely criticised for its incompatibility with EU law, the principle of non-refoulement and Spain’s obligation to protect unaccompanied minors. Though the judgment brings in an entirely new approach, some have questioned the impact of the judgment on the Court’s approach to push backs more generally. This blogpost considers the application by the Court of its new approach in light of the factual evidence in the case, and whether this allows for any conclusions to be drawn as to  the broader impact of this judgment on the situation at European borders. Thus the blogpost will first assess the new legal test in light of the Court’s jurisprudence on the terms “genuine and effective.” and secondly how the new test was applied in this case. Third, the blogpost will look at how the Grand Chamber assessed evidence in this case. The final section explores the potential significance of this judgement. Continue reading →

Studio Monitori and Others v. Georgia: access to public documents must be ‘instrumental’ for the right to freedom of expression

Guest Blogger Access to information, Freedom of Expression, Studio Monitori and Others v. Georgia

By Dirk Voorhoof and Ronan Ó Fathaigh

In the case of Studio Monitori and Others v. Georgia the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in its judgment of 30 January 2020 has confirmed that the right to freedom of expression and information as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) can only be invoked in order to obtain access to public documents when a set of conditions are fulfilled. It is one of the cases following the judgment of the Grand Chamber in Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary to test the scope and limits of the right of access to information and the applicability of Article 10 ECHR. The most important consequence of the judgment in Studio Monitori and Others is that NGOs, journalists or other public watchdogs requesting access to public documents have to motivate and clarify in their request that access to the documents they are applying for is instrumental, and even necessary, for their journalistic reporting and that the requested documents contain information of public interest. Continue reading →

Cyberviolence, domestic abuse and lack of a gender-sensitive approach – Reflections on Buturuga versus Romania

Guest Blogger Buturuga v. Romania, Domestic Violence

By Fleur van Leeuwen (Boğaziçi University)

‘The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men.’ It is a quote from Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman in an article on domestic violence in the Guardian last weekend. The androcentric nature of international human rights law has been well documented.[1] Gender mainstreaming was championed in the 1990s as the approach to rectify this deficiency. But although some steps were taken – i.e. domestic abuse is no longer considered to be an issue that falls outside the realm of human rights – the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) on domestic violence shows that the required transformation of the system is not yet in sight.[2]

The case of Buturuga versus Romania of the Court of last February offers another classic example in this respect. Although the comments of the Court on cyber violence as an aspect of domestic abuse are noteworthy – the judgment at large is not. The most significant conclusion to be drawn from Buturuga versus Romania is that gender mainstreaming – or (consistently) applying a gender-sensitive approach – remains ostensibly still too difficult a task for the Court. Continue reading →

Bulk retention of private-sector subscriber data for governmental purposes does not violate the Convention: Breyer v. Germany

Guest Blogger Breyer v. Germany, Data protection, Right to Private Life

Judith Vermeulen is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Law & Technology research group, the Human Rights Centre and PIXLES at Ghent University.

On January 30, 2020, in the case of Breyer v. Germany, the European Court of Human Rights ruled by six votes to one that the – legally required – indiscriminate storage of subscriber information by telecommunication service providers does not violate Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Amongst other things, the Court found that the interference at hand was rather limited in nature, thereby conveniently invoking Court of Justice jurisprudence which suited its point of view this time. Contrary to what judge Ranzoni argued in his dissenting opinion, the Court in Strasbourg was however not wrong in reaching this conclusion. The dissenter’s criticism regarding the insufficiency of the safeguards circumscribing the measure, on the other hand, was not without reasons. Continue reading →

Who can represent a child (with disabilities) before the ECtHR? Locus Standi requirements and the issue of curator ad litem in L.R. v. North Macedonia

Guest Blogger Children's Rights, CLR for Valentin Câmpeanu v. Romania, L.R. v. North Macedonia

Dr. Gamze Erdem Türkelli is a Post-Doctoral Fellow Fundamental Research of Research Foundation (FWO) Flanders (File Number 12Q1719N) at the Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp Faculty of Law.

The NGO Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Skopje (HCHR) brought a case before the ECtHR on behalf of L.R., an eight-year-old child with moderate mental disabilities, severe physical disabilities (cerebral palsy) and a speech impediment. L.R. had been in the care of state-run institutions since he was three months old. The NGO alleged that L.R. had suffered from ill-treatment and inadequate care in violation of Art. 3 of the European Convention. In 2013, North Macedonia’s Ombudsman visited a state-run institute and found L.R. tied to his bed, which subsequently gave rise to the NGO’s interest in his case. The Strasbourg Court unanimously held that there had been a violation of Art. 3 as L.R. had been placed in an institute that could not provide him with adequate or requisite care for his needs and had suffered inhuman and degrading treatment (L.R. v. North Macedonia, §95).This contribution does not focus on the substance of the case but addresses rather a procedural issue: the issue of the representation of a minor who is in a vulnerable situation before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), raised by Judge Wojtyczek in his Partly Dissenting Opinion the case. Continue reading →

Push backs of “badly behaving” migrants at Spanish border are not collective expulsions (but might still be illegal refoulements)

Guest Blogger Asylum Seekers, ND and NT v. Spain, Prohibition of Collective Expulsion

By Ruben Wissing (Ghent University)

On 13 February, the Grand Chamber rendered a long awaited judgment, meandering over more than one hundred pages, in the N.D. and N.T case on the push-back practices against migrants at the Moroccan-Spanish border fence surrounding the city of Melilla – the so-called devoluciones en caliente or ‘hot returns’ by the Spanish border police.  The Court did not qualify them as collective expulsions, thus acquitting Spain of having violated Art. 4 of Protocol No. 4. However, the specific circumstances of the case, as well as the absence of an examination of the principle of non-refoulement, have been ultimately decisive for the outcome of this case, thus restricting the extent to which the Court’s findings can be generalised to similar practices at the EU external borders. Continue reading →

Tell me more, tell me more: the obligation for national courts to reason their refusals to refer to the CJEU in Sanofi Pasteur.

Guest Blogger European Court of Justice, Right to a Fair Trial, Sanofi Pasteur v. France

By Jasper Krommendijk (Radboud University, the Netherlands)

On 13 February 2020, the ECtHR found for the fourth time ever a violation of Article 6(1) ECHR for a failure of the highest national court to give proper reasons for its refusal to refer preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in Sanofi Pasteur. In 2014 and 2015, the ECtHR already determined a breach for a similar omission of the Italian Court of Cassation in Dhahbi and Schipani, while the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court was given a rap over the knuckles in 2019 in Baltic Master. This time it was the French Court of Cassation who took the blame in a claim for damages for bodily harm resulting from vaccination against hepatitis B. The company Sanofi Pasteur was found liable by lower French courts and appealed to the Court of Cassation. It unsuccessfully requested the Court to refer questions about the Product Liability Directive 85/374 and, more specifically, the obligation for the victim to prove the damage, defect and causal relationship between defect and damage. The Court dismissed the appeal whereby it explicitly noted that it did so without a need to refer. In this comment I will argue that this judgment shows once again the unpredictability and inconsistency in the case law of the ECtHR. What is needed is a Grand Chamber judgment as well as guidance from the CJEU to tell us more about the exact requirements for national courts. Continue reading →