Strasbourg Observers

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  • Petra Järvinen and Ville Vikman

Pasquinelli and others v San Marino – The momentous competing interests of the community as a whole against healthcare workers refusing the COVID-19 vaccine

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) […]

  • Júlia Miklasová

The Conflation of Jurisdiction and Attribution Tests, the ‘Law,’ and the International Legal Status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia: A Review of Recent ECtHR Case Law

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, […]

  • Eva Brems

The single judge and the single-sentence motivation (1): The Sloppy Decision in Deleuran v. Denmark

April 09, 2024

Eva Brems ‘The European Court as the main violator of human rights’, it said on a PowerPoint slide in my ECHR class this semester. This was a presentation by a guest speaker: an attorney with a lot of experience with ECtHR procedures. I had simply invited him to talk about this experience, but he had […]

  • Dr. Mateusz Wąsik

Przybyszewska and Others v. Poland: A Milestone for Poland while a Tiny Brick for Other Countries

January 16, 2024

by Dr. Mateusz Wąsik ‘Member States are required to provide a legal framework allowing same‑sex couples to be granted adequate recognition and protection of their relationship’, ruled the ECtHR in the latest judgment for same-sex couples in the case of Przybyszewska and Others v. Poland  on 12 December 2023. Academics and practitioners may say nihil […]

  • Georgiana Epure and Elena Brodeală

Gender (Im)balance and the Making of the ECtHR Bench: A Critical Discussion of Romania’s Selection Process for its Strasbourg Judge

June 30, 2023

Georgiana Epure and Elena Brodeală While there is a growing consensus on the importance of gender balance in the judiciary, women are still underrepresented on the benches of international courts. The European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”, “ECtHR”) is no exception. Despite the steps taken by the Council of Europe (“CoE”) to improve the […]

  • Harriet Ní Chinnéide

L.B. v Hungary: ‘Where is the proportionality of the measure? It is not there. Animal Defenders has been invoked and applied in reverse.’

May 09, 2023

Harriet Ní Chinnéide In L.B. v Hungary, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) applied the general measures doctrine developed in Animal Defenders International v. UK to find that the Hungarian legislative policy of publishing the personal data of taxpayers who were in debt violated Article 8 of the European […]

  • Kelly Matheson, Anders Carlson and Paul Rink

Verein KlimaSeniorinnen, Carême, and Duarte Agostinho: How Science Can Save Humanity

March 10, 2023

By Kelly Matheson, Anders Carlson and Paul Rink All eyes will be on Strasbourg this spring when the Grand Chamber hears the first two in a trio of cases legally defining the relationship between human rights and climate change: KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, Carême v. France, and Duarte Agostinho v. Portugal and 31 Others. Courts around […]

  • Sanna Mustasaari

The issue of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the repatriation of children detained in Syrian camps: shortcomings in the ECtHR judgment in H.F. and Others v. France

November 01, 2022

By Sanna Mustasaari The long-awaited Grand Chamber judgement in the case of H.F. and Others v. France addressed the refusal by France to repatriate the daughters and grandchildren of the applicants, all French nationals, from Syrian camps. The question of whether States should assume responsibility for their nationals, particularly children, who have been detained in […]

  • Simona Florescu

Walking on a tightrope: some reflections on the ECtHR’s role in assessing the best interests of the child in parental disputes over the child’s religious upbringing

September 23, 2022

By Simona Florescu In T.C. v Italy, the ECtHR was once again called upon to decide on sensitive questions involving divergent parental views over the child’s upbringing. In this particular case, the main question was whether the Italian courts’ judgments ordering the applicant to refrain from actively involving his daughter in religious activities constituted discrimination […]

  • Anne-Katrin Speck

Russia and the Strasbourg Court: evidentiary challenges arising from Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe

June 02, 2022

[This post first appeared on the DISSECT blog.] Introduction It has been three months since Europe woke up to the horrific news that Russia had launched a brutal invasion of neighbouring Ukraine—two months during which Ukraine has seen immeasurable suffering and destruction, and two months which have dramatically changed Europe’s human rights landscape. It is […]

  • Strasbourg Observers

Poll: Best and Worst ECtHR Judgment and Best Separate Opinion of 2021

February 16, 2022

Dear readers, As we step into the year 2022, we are taking the occasion to look back at 2021. It has been an eventful year: as President Spano points out in the Court’s Annual report, now is a crucial time for human rights law, between technological and societal advances, increasing polarisation and political upheaval, and […]