February 20, 2020
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 […]
January 31, 2020
By Prof Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou (University of Liverpool), Editor-in-Chief of the European Convention on Human Rights Law Review It has been discussed on various levels that weak enforcement of the ECtHR judgments is a major drawback of the whole system. The lack of political will of the governments of the Contracting Parties to the Convention to […]
January 23, 2020
By Dr. Ingrid Leijten, Assistant Professor at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University On December 20th of last year, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in the case of Urgenda v. de Staat der Nederlanden, confirming the finding of the Court of Appeal that the State violates articles 2 and 8 ECHR […]
January 08, 2020
By Valérie Junod and Olivier Simon On November 26. 2019, the ECtHR issued a 6 to 1 judgment finding that Russia had not breached the right of the complainants when it denied them access to methadone and buprenorphine (these two medicines are hereafter abbreviated to M/B) for treating their duly diagnosed opioid dependence syndrome (ODS). […]
December 23, 2019
By Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Lund University) The ECtHR has been for a long time criticized for its approach to immigration detention that diverts from the generally applicable principles to deprivation of liberty in other contexts. As Cathryn Costello has observed in her article Immigration Detention: The Ground beneath our Feet, […]
December 19, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof In Tagiyev and Huseynov v. Azerbaijan, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that the conviction and imprisonment of Azerbaijani journalist Rafig Nazir oglu Tagiye, and editor Samir Sadagat oglu Huseynov, for incitement to religious hatred, violated their right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. […]
December 16, 2019
By Massimo Frigo (Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurists) On 14 October, the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) of Spain convicted 12 people in connection with their part in the organisation on 1 October 2017 of a referendum on Catalonian independence, that was conducted despite having been declared illegal by the Constitutional Court. […]
December 12, 2019
By Emre Turkut (PhD Researcher at Ghent University and DAAD Visiting Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin) On 10 December 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) delivered its much-awaited decision in the case of Osman Kavala v. Turkey, an application lodged by a human rights defender and philanthropist to challenge […]
December 02, 2019
By Katarina Frostell, Project Manager and PhD Candidate, Institute for Human Rights, Åbo Akademi University, Finland On 24 October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in J.D. and A. v. the United Kingdom, in the so-called bedroom tax case. In its judgment, the Court applied a discrimination analysis on the reduction […]
November 04, 2019
By Dirk Voorhoof and Ronan Ó Fathaigh In Szurovecz v. Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights has held that a refusal to grant a journalist access to an asylum-seeker ‘reception centre’ in Hungary violated his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. The ECtHR emphasised that newsgathering, including ‘first-hand’ observation by a […]
October 31, 2019
By Linda Hamid, Research Fellow at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies – Institute for International Law, KU Leuven On 15 October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment in the case of Grama and Dîrul v. The Republic of Moldova and Russia, whereby it found a violation of Art. 1, […]
October 23, 2019
In the recent judgment of Strand Lobben and Others v. Norway, the Grand Chamber found a violation of Article 8 ECHR (the right to respect for family life) on account of shortcomings in the decision-making process leading to the adoption of a boy who had been placed in foster care. The Grand Chamber in particular […]
October 17, 2019
By Dr. Mark Klaassen, Institute of Immigration Law, Leiden University On 1 October 2019, in the Savran judgment the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: ‘the Court’) has applied the Paposhvili-test in cases involving the expulsion of migrants who fear to be the victim of a violation of Article 3 ECHR because a medical treatment […]
October 14, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof The European Court’s Second Section recently found that criminal proceedings against the owner and the editor of a newspaper for having published statements by the leader of a terrorist organisation were justified and did not violate the right to freedom of expression. The Court in Gürbüz and Bayar […]
October 10, 2019
By Prof. Marit Skivenes, Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism (University of Bergen) The backdrop for the Grand Chamber case, is the dissenting Chamber judgment of 2017 – Strand Lobben vs. Norway – about a boy that had been adopted from foster care. Here, the Chamber concluded it had not been a violation of […]
September 12, 2019
By Simona Florescu PhD fellow, Leiden Law School, the Child Law Department On 18 June 2019 the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 8 of the Convention in the case of Haddad v Spain. The main reason was that the Spanish authorities did not discharge of their positive obligations to facilitate […]
September 05, 2019
By Constantin Cojocariu On 25 June 2019, the Court released an eagerly awaited judgment in the case of Stoian v. Romania, brought by a disabled child and his mother, who complained about the denial of the right to education. The Court, ruling as a Committee, rejected all claims, brutally ending an unprecedented litigation campaign on […]
September 03, 2019
By Nicole Bürli, Human Rights Advisor of the World Organisation against Torture (OMCT)[1] On 25 June 2019, coincidently the eve of the international day in support of victims of torture, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights limited the scope of Article 3 ECHR. In the case of Nicolae Virgiliu Tănase v. […]
August 29, 2019
On 16 July, the Court delivered its judgment in the case of Zhdanov 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 account of the allegedly immoral character of their activities. In this judgment, the Court found a […]
August 21, 2019
By Tine Van Hof, PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp On the 18th of June 2019, the European Court of Human Rights gave judgment in the case of Vladimir Ushakov v. Russia (application no. 15122/17). The Court held by six votes to one that there has been a violation of the applicant’s right to […]