In March, France made a controversial move and became the first country in the world to explicitly ban research on individual judicial behaviour. It is now a criminal offence to ‘evaluate, analyse, compare or predict’ the behaviour of individual judges. The result is a flagrant violation of the freedom of expression, represents an affront to basic values of academic freedom, and disregards basic principles of the rule of law.
Idomeni ist ein Ort und ein Name, der zum Symbol wurde. Zeitweise lebten 13.000 Menschen in dem Lager an der griechisch-nordmazedonischen Grenze. Am vergangenen Donnerstag hat nun der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte Griechenland verurteilt. In einem Fall von fünf unbegleiteten minderjährigen Flüchtlingen, die sich u.a. in Idomeni aufgehalten hatten, sah der Gerichtshof eine unmenschliche und erniedrigende Behandlung.
Der Dialog zwischen dem BGH in Karlsruhe und dem EGMR hat spätestens seit den Caroline-Urteilen aus Straßburg gut funktioniert. In einem Urteil aus dem letzten Monat scheint der III. Zivilsenat des BGH dagegen den Blick über den Rhein zu scheuen. Bei der Frage, ob ein Verstoß gegen die Europäische Menschenrechtskonvention vorliegt, verlässt er sich ausschließlich auf seine eigene Rechtsprechung und übergeht den EGMR.
Der 70. Geburtstag des Europarats am heutigen Tage gibt Anlass zu Stolz und Freude. Doch gleichzeitig befindet sich der Europarat in einer tiefen politischen und finanziellen Krise. Zentrale Frage ist, inwieweit er bei der Durchsetzung der Pflichten der Mitgliedstaaten die Desintegration in Kauf nehmen muss. Die aktuelle Rhetorik sendet jedenfalls das falsche Signal.
On 18 March, following approval by President Putin, Russia’s controversial anti-fake news legislation entered into force. While Russia is not the only state to address the issues of hate speech or fake news with legislative means, its new legislation raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly due to its imprecise and overly broad scope of application.
The outcome of the case ND and NT v. Spain currently pending before the Grand Chamber may determine the future course of the Court in other migration policy cases. It will show whether the ECtHR still deserves its title as an ‘island of hope in stormy times’ or whether this island is drowning under the pressure of some of its Member States.
The Dutch climate case has reached a new high. Last week, The Hague Court of Appeal upheld the 2015 verdict which ordered the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020. The Court did so on the ground that the current actions of the Dutch government to combat climate change are insufficient in the light of the state’s human rights obligations. Has the Court gone too far?
Compliance with judicial decisions often poses challenges, all the more so when international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights are involved. How to react to a failure to abide by judgments of the ECHR has been a question for the Council of Europe for some time. But the suspicious background of a currently unfolding episode involving Azerbaijan may offer an unusually clear justification for a strong reaction even to a single case of non-compliance.
In her blog post “Is Something Rotten in the State of Denmark?”, Helga Molbæk-Steensig analyses the making of the Copenhagen Declaration; the most important outcome of the Danish chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. Molbæk-Steensig agrees with most commentators that the declaration does not reflect the Danish government’s “strong discourse of sovereignty and democratic deficit in the Danish debate“. We certainly agree on this point, but we cannot agree with Molbæk-Steensig when she claims that we – Denmark’s national human rights institution – played a passive, or even negative, role during the making of the declaration. We especially disagree when Molbæk-Steensig implies that we somehow legitimise a far-right narrative designed to limit the system of human rights protection in Europe or subscribe to a reductionist concept of democracy.
The final version of the Copenhagen Declaration has turned out to be a lot less dramatic than the original draft led many observers to believe. This leaves several questions of why. Why did Denmark, traditionally a frontrunner country, create a draft declaration so regressive it gave rise to harsh critiques from the Council of Europe Assembly, from academia and from civil society? Why was the Danish Minister of Justice glossing over the content of the declaration? Why has the Danish Institute of Human Rights been so relatively quiet throughout the whole debacle?
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters