Court and Academia Dialogue

The University of Strasbourg's Law Faculty is organising its fourth annual colloquium between academics and judges of the European Court of Human Rights. The French-language hybrid event, entitled 'Dialogue entre la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme et la Doctrine', takes place on Friday 14 June from 13h45 to 18h00. It is organised by  Florence Benoit-Rohmer, Ledi Bianku and Marko Bosnjak. Topics to be discussed include Protocol 16, the right to strike, the rule of law and judicial independence. The full programme can be found here. For registration, please go here.

Webinar on ECtHR Climate Change Cases

On Friday 31 May (13:00-14:00 CET) the University of Göttingen is organizing a webinar entitled 'Climate Change and Human Rights: Exploring the ECHR’s KlimaSeniorinnen and Duarte Agostinho cases'. In the webinar, Corina Heri (Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Zurich) and Kata Dosza (Senior Associate Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the Brussels School of Governance) will be discussing the ECtHR's decisions in the cases of Duarte Agostinho and KlimaSeniorinnen.  The webinar is organized for students and academics interested in climate change and human rights, legal professionals, scholars, climate activists and NGO representatives, policymakers and governments officials, and anyone else interested in climate litigation and human rights. 

The webinar will cover the following topics:

- The legal frameworks and arguments in the Duarte Agostinho and KlimaSeniorinnen

cases.

- The ECHR's reasoning behind its decisions and their broader implications.

- Comparative analysis with other significant climate litigation cases.

- The evolving role of international human rights frameworks in addressing global

environmental challenges.

You can register here.

New President and Other Changes at the Court

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights announced a number of position changes in its internal organisation. Most pre-eminently, the Court elected its new President: Marko Bošnjak, the Court's judge in respect of Slovenia. Since 2022, he has been a vice-President of the Court and his term as a judge started in 2016, meaning it will end in 2025. His term as a President will thus be relatively short, following a pattern of the Court's Presidents of the last years - showing what a different type of institution the Court has become compared its early decades when Presidents served for many years on end in a parttime Court with much fewer cases. Judge Bošnjak succeeds the Court's current President Síofra O’Leary on 2 July 2024.

The election led to other shifts: Arnfinn Bårdsen, the judge in respect of  Norway, has been elected as Vice-President. And Ivana Jelić, the judge in respect of Montenegro, has been elected as new Section President. They will also take up their duties on 2 July. 

Good luck to all in their new positions! 

75 Years Council of Europe and Civil Society

In the week in which the Council of Europe celebrates its 75th anniversary (founded on 5 May 1949) - a full and bilingual timeline is available here - two civil society initiatives were undertaken:

The first is the presentation to states of the 'Civil Society Evaluation of the Progress of Implementation of the Reykjavík Summit Commitments by the Council of Europe and Its Member States' one year after the Reykjavik Summit'. This document, compiled under the auspices of CURE (Campaign to Uphold Rights in Europe) is the outcome of a process (in which the founder of this blog also participated) in which both the steps taken so far by states to implement the Reykjavik Declaration were compiled as well as the steps that still need to be taken were identified. In terms of the issue of implementation of judgments of the Court, the document acknowledges some important progress on technical, budgetary and procedural matters, but simultaneously urges states not to lose sight of the core of the matter: 'ensuring a stronger political follow-up to cases of non-implementation' by the Committee of Ministers and CoE institutions.

Secondly, a group of over 400 civil society organisations have joined forces to call upon Council of Europe to add a protocol to the ECHR with a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, following upon a report adopted by PACE earlier last month. More organisations can join the call here.

New Special Issue ECHR Law Review

The first issue of the year of the ECHR Law Review has just been published (Vol. 5, Issue 1). This time it is a special issue entitled 'The ‘Special’ Relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Convention of Human Rights'. The special issue focuses specifically on the question of what the consequences would be if the UK decides to withdraw from the ECHR. The issue contains one editorial note and nine research articles. This is the table of contents:

* Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou, 'The United Kingdom and the European Convention on Human Rights: Together Until the End?'

* Merris Amos, 'Reality Amidst Rhetoric: Implementation of ECtHR Judgments in the UK'

* Ed Bates, 'UK Withdrawal From the echr (‘BrECHRit’): From Taboo to Tenable?'

* Frederick Cowell, 'Locking in Human Rights: An Exploration of the Barriers to ECHR Withdrawal'

* Lewis Graham, 'Boldness, Caution, Avoidance: Recent Cases Against the UK Before the European Court of Human Rights'

* Paul Johnson, 'UK Withdrawal From the European Convention on Human Rights: A Disaster for lGBT People'

* Natasa Mavronicola, 'Facilitating (Further) Inhumanity: On the Prospect of Losing Article 3 echr, a Vital Guarantee for the Under-Protected'

* Valsamis Mitsilegas and Elspeth Guild, 'The UK and the ECHR After Brexit: The Challenge of Immigration Control'

* Patricia Popelier, 'What’s Cooking? General Measures in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights'

* Stuart Wallace, 'Military Operations and Withdrawal From the European Convention on Human Rights'

Seminar on Procedural Costs and the ECtHR

On Friday 31 May from 12:00-13:15, the Faculty of Law of Lund University is organizing a seminar entitled 'The Costs Policy of the European Court of Human Rights: From Judicialisation to Judicial Restraint'. In the seminar, Ezgi Özlü (Postdoctoral researcher at the Luxembourg Center of European Law of the University of Luxembourg) will be presenting her PhD on the Costs Policy of the European Court of Human Rights. This is a short description of the seminar:

'This seminar will examine how the policy of costs at the European Court of Human Rights affects the nature of the cases brought before it. The main focus is on legal aid and the reimbursement of costs and expenses mechanisms. Eminent for the protection and promotion of human rights in Europe, both of these mechanisms have been developed in parallel with the gradual inclusion of the individual to the proceedings. Through the judicialisation process, with the broad use of the ‘equity’ principle, the Court has adopted a flexible approach. Nevertheless, managerialism and self-restraint have weakened this policy. The application of a single scale for legal aid, formalist assessment of reimbursement criteria, automatisation in decision-making, and dependence on member States demonstrate how the current costs policy limits the scope of individual application. This restriction, however, also limits the powers of the Court.'

You can participate via Zoom: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/64236572774