November 08, 2024
by Zoë Grossi and Pauline Charlotte Janssens Introduction On 23 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment in the case of Zăicescu and Fălticineanu v. Romania. The Court unanimously held that Romania violated Article 8 juncto Article 14 of the Convention by acquitting two high-ranking military officials previously convicted of war […]
October 31, 2024
By Cathérine Van de Graaf, Eva Brems and Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez The Human Rights Centre[i] of Ghent University, joined by prof. Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez (Université Paris Nanterre) submitted a third party intervention to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) in the communicated case of F.D. and I.M. and three others v. France (38506/23, […]
October 29, 2024
By Sarah Ganty In Dian, the Court flushes the promise of the Lăcătuş judgment that ‘begging, as a form of the right to call on another person to obtain his or her assistance, must evidently be regarded as a basic freedom’ (§59) down the drain. The Court adopts a skewed vision of poverty, finding in […]
October 25, 2024
by Dr. iur. Yasir Gökce The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) pronounced recently an interesting judgment in the Yasak case, which appears to negate many of its conclusions in the landmark Yalcinkaya ruling. In the latter judgment, the Court characterised the practice of the Turkish judiciary to equate the alleged download or use of […]
October 18, 2024
Deekshitha Ganesan and Richard Köhler On 11 July 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) delivered an important decision in the case of W.W. v. Poland, finding that Polish prison authorities’ denial of access to hormone replacement therapy to a trans woman who was imprisoned violated Article 8 of the European Convention on […]
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 […]