October 04, 2024
1. Introduction On 29 August 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgement in Pasquinelli and others v. San Marino (24622/22) concerning COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines. The judgement, issued by the Court’s First Section, supplements the Court’s previous case law concerning COVID-19 vaccination and the pandemic in general (Communauté genevoise d’action syndicale (CGAS) […]
September 06, 2024
Maja Lysienia For over three years now, crisis at the Belarusian border has been testing national authorities’ commitment to human rights. Since July 2021, Belarus has allowed for, facilitated or forced the irregular entry of third-country nationals to the EU. This new state conduct was quickly labelled as an “instrumentalization of migration”. Poland, Lithuania and […]
August 27, 2024
by Dirk Voorhoof 1. – Introduction In its judgment of the 4th June 2024 in the case of Sokolovskiy v. Russia the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealt with the issue of religious hate speech as a criminal offence interfering with the right to freedom of expression and information under Article 10 ECHR (see […]
August 23, 2024
By Júlia Miklasová This blog features an analysis of the common threads that link three recent ECtHR judgments related to the Russia-controlled parts of Georgian territory – the de facto entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia –with the Court’s existing case law. Particularly, the blog focuses on the conflation of the jurisdiction and attribution tests, […]
August 20, 2024
by dr Holly Greenwood Introduction The case of Nealon and Hallam v. the United Kingdom concerned a joint application from two individuals who were denied compensation for their wrongful convictions under the statutory scheme in England and Wales. The applicants argued s.133(1ZA) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, as amended by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime […]
August 13, 2024
By Andrew Novak The decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Saakashvili v. Georgia provides a novel comparative analysis of the executive clemency power and an executive’s immunity from prosecution for misuse of that power. The debate over the nature of the pardon, filed by the former president of the Republic of Georgia, […]
July 17, 2024
By Saïla Ouald-Chaib “Les droits de l’homme n’existent pas. Ce sont les droits de l’homme blanc” These are the words of a young French Muslim girl whom I met when I was still in law school. She spoke those words when she learned I was studying human rights law. Her words stuck with me during […]
July 03, 2024
By Júlia Miklasová On 25 June 2024, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights rendered a long-awaited judgment (combined applications No. 20958/14 (merits) and 38334/18 (admissibility and merits)) in an inter-State case of Ukraine v. Russia (re Crimea). In this unanimous judgment, the Court found Russia responsible for the violation of the majority of […]
June 28, 2024
By Theresa Lanzl and Harriet Ní Chinnéide On the 18th of April, the ECtHR rejected a complaint from Russian musician, Philip Kirkorov, concerning the Lithuanian authorities’ decision to ban him from entering the country. After engaging in a full proportionality assessment, the Court found that his complaint was manifestly ill-founded and proportionate to the legitimate […]
June 07, 2024
By Koen Lemmens Freedom of expression raises difficult legal questions for people occupying special positions in society. As a matter of principle they enjoy freedom of expression, but the specific position in which they find themselves may have an impact on the scope of that freedom. Judges are an example of a category of speakers […]
May 31, 2024
By Eleni Polymenopoulou On February 2nd 2024, the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) issued Auray v France, an interesting judgment condemning France for restricting freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and protesters’ freedom of movement. The judgment, which is for now available in French only, became final on May 5th and builds on the […]
May 24, 2024
by Thibaut Lesseliers In the case of Föderation der Aleviten Gemeinden in Österreich, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’, ‘the Court’) ruled on the Article 9 (freedom of religion) and Article 6 § 1 (reasonable time aspect of right to fair trial) complaints brought by an Alevi cultural association following the refusal of the […]
April 23, 2024
by dr. Cathérine Van de Graaf1 On 30 November, the Fifth Division of the European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case of Georgian Muslim Relations and Others v. Georgia. The Court ruled that Georgia had violated its positive obligations under Articles 8 and 9 of the Convention in conjunction with Article 14 as […]
February 06, 2024
by Ignatius Yordan Nugraha Civil servants are constitutionally prohibited from striking in Germany. This general prohibition also affects State school teachers who have a civil servant status. On 14 December 2023, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in Humpert and Others v Germany that such a prohibition did not […]
January 30, 2024
by Lidia Carchilan The impartiality of judges has been addressed by the Court on numerous occasions (see examples here, here, and here), providing the Court with the opportunity to develop a consistent line of case-law on the issue, from both its subjective and objective perspectives. In Tadić v. Croatia the Court ruled on the impartiality […]
January 23, 2024
by Merel Spaander Given that the Strasbourg Club dedicated a discussion to the interesting case of Baret & Caballero v. France so recently, I can imagine that any reader would think: do we really need another blog post on this French case so soon? As an embryo law enthusiast, I must give a biased ‘yes’. […]
January 12, 2024
by Felix Peerboom On 17 October 2023, the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR, the Court) published its ruling in A.D. v. Malta (press release available in English and French). The Court’s condemnation of Malta in this case for its ill-treatment of the applicant — a vulnerable asylum-seeker and presumed minor suffering from tuberculosis (TB), […]
January 09, 2024
By Cristina Cocito In Glukhin v. Russia of 4 July 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered an important ruling on the fundamental rights implications of technology. The case concerns compliance of facial recognition technology (hereafter FRT) with human rights. The judgment underlines the ‘highly intrusive’ nature of FRT. Most importantly, it finds […]
December 15, 2023
by Daniel Krotov French administrative procedural law notoriously provides wide access to the courts that, from a foreign point of view, may even seem a bit excessive. One example was the possibility to challenge administrative acts indefinitely if they lacked proper instruction on the right to appeal. In an effort to restrict this perpetual challenging […]
December 01, 2023
by Dr Steve Foster Disenfranchisement of convicted prisoners in Europe remains varied despite the Grand Chamber’s pivotal decision in Hirst v. United Kingdom No. 2 that any interference with a prisoner’s right to vote had to be necessary and proportionate. Thus, since Hirst the Court has upheld a number of State restrictions on prisoner voting […]