In the case of Vazagashvili and Shanava v. Georgia, the Court has found several violations of the right to life. The case concerned the death by shooting of the applicants’ son in a police operation in 2006 and the ensuring investigation.

The Court noted shortcomings in the investigation, a lack of thoroughness, objectivity and integrity, and a failure by the authorities investigating the case to act diligently. It also noted that the first applicant had himself had borne the burden of the investigation, interviewing witnesses and collecting other evidence about his son’s murder, and that he had been killed by a police officer on account of his activities in the case. The first applicant’s efforts to disclose police crime and corruption had ultimately led to him being murdered, highlighting the consequence of the authorities’ lack of diligence in pursuing the persons who had murdered the applicants’ son.

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In the case of T.I. and Others v. Greece, the Court has found a violation of the prohibition on slavery and forced labour. The applicants, 3 Russian nationals, complained that they had been forced to work as prostitutes in Greece.

The Court held that the legal framework at the relevant time had not been sufficient to punish the traffickers and to ensure effective prevention of human trafficking. It also considered that the level of diligence required by Article 4 of the Convention had not been applied in dealing with the case.

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The Court has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Zu Guttenberg v. Germany.

The applicant, a politician and formerly a Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Technology and Federal Minister of Defence, complained about the refusal by the German courts to forbid publication, by the magazine Bunte, of photographs of his homes in Germany and the United States.

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The Court declared inadmissible the application in Glaisen v. Switzerland. The applicant, who is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair, complained that he had been denied access to the Pathé Rialto cinema in Geneva, as it could not cater for his disability.

The Court considered the importance of this activity for the applicant, a cinema-goer, not only to see films but also to have contact with others. However, Article 8 of the Convention could not be construed as granting access to a specific cinema to see a given film in a situation like that in the present case where access to other cinemas in the vicinity was possible.

The Court thus found that the denial of access to the cinema to see the film in question had not affected the applicant’s life in such a way as to interfere with his right to personal development or to establish and develop relationships with other human beings and the outside world.

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The Court has communicated the case of Grzęda v. Poland to the Polish Government. It concerns judicial reform in Poland, which resulted in the early termination of the applicant’s mandate as an elected member of the National Council of the Judiciary.

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Country profiles containing data and information, broken down by individual State, on significant cases considered by the Court or currently pending before it, have been updated on 1 July 2019.

There is one country file for each Council of Europe member State.

Country profiles

The Court has published an Overview of its case-law for the first 6 months of 2019, which contains a selection of cases of interest from a legal perspective.

Overview of the Court's case-law (January-June 2019)

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