Forthcoming hearing
The Court will be holding a Grand Chamber hearing in the case of Mansouri v. Italy on 18 September 2024.
The case concerns the lawfulness and conditions of a Tunisian national’s confinement on board the ship being used to return him to his country of origin on the basis of a refusal-of-entry order issued by the border police.
Chamber News
In the case of Shlosberg v. Russia the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to free elections.
The case concerned an opposition politician who stood as a candidate in the 2021 State Duma elections and was disqualified on account of his involvement in an organisation classified as extremist by the Russian authorities. This “involvement”, according to the authorities, had consisted in taking part in a peaceful rally in support of Alexei Navalny and in encouraging others to do the same.
The Court found that exercising the Convention right to peaceful assembly could not constitute grounds for any sanction, including disqualification from standing for Parliament. This reason had been an arbitrary ground for disqualification. That consideration was all the more relevant with regard to the action for which the applicant had been criticised, which consisted in merely encouraging other people to take part in this rally. The applicant’s disqualification, while formally complying with positive law, had thus been based on arbitrary grounds.
In the case of Tsulukidze and Rusulashvili v. Georgia the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to a fair trial.
The case concerned the alleged lack of impartiality of a Supreme Court judge who was a member of three-judge panels which rejected claims brought by the applicants and whose judicial assistant was the daughter of the lawyer of the respondent party, the Telasi electricity distribution company, in those proceedings.
The Court found that the fact that the judge’s judicial assistant was the daughter of Telasi’s legal representative, coupled with the broad mandate given to judicial assistants in the Georgian judicial system, had created a situation which legitimately could raise doubts as to the impartiality of the judge. The applicants had not known to what extent the judicial assistant had actually been involved in their cases, and the Supreme Court had failed to elucidate the circumstances of her involvement, thereby failing to dispel their doubts concerning the impartiality of that judge. The Court therefore found that their doubts were objectively justified and that they had not been provided with sufficient procedural safeguards in this respect.
In the case of Pasquinelli and Others v. San Marino the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to respect for private and family life.
The case concerned the effects on the applicants – all healthcare workers – of their refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Bearing in mind the wide discretion States had in healthcare policy matters, the Court found that the measures had been proportionate and justified in view of the legitimate aim pursued, specifically, the health of the population in general, including the applicants themselves, and the rights and freedoms of others. It noted furthermore that the losses suffered by the applicants were an unavoidable consequence of an “exceptional and unforeseeable” context of a global pandemic that had pertained at the relevant time in this case.
In the case of Yasak v. Türkiye the Court held that there had been no violation of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment and no violation of the principle of no punishment without law.
The case concerned the applicant’s conviction for membership of an armed terrorist organisation described by the Turkish authorities as the Fetullahist Terror Organisation/Parallel State Structure.
The Court considered that the applicant’s detention conditions in prison had not reached the threshold of severity required to characterise the treatment to which he had been subjected as inhuman or degrading within the meaning of the Convention.
As to the foreseeability of the applicant’s conviction for membership of an armed terrorist organisation, the Court considered that the offence of which he had been convicted had had a basis in the relevant national law at the time when it was committed and that this offence had been defined sufficiently clearly to meet the requirement of foreseeability and thus to enable the applicant to regulate his conduct.
In the case of M.A. and Others v. France the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to respect for private life.
The case concerned the creation, under French criminal law, of the offence of purchasing sexual relations, which, in the applicants’ allegation, seriously endangered the physical and mental integrity and health of individuals engaged in prostitution, and radically infringed on their right to respect for private life, in so far as this included the right to personal autonomy and sexual freedom.
Delivered Judgments and Decisions
Grand Chamber News
The Court has decided to reject the request to refer the case Dániel Karsai v. Hungary to the Grand Chamber.
The case concerned the right to a self-determined death of a person affected with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease.
On 2 September 2024 a panel of 5 judges will examine one Grand Chamber referral request.
Decisions
The Court declared the application in the case of Levrault v. Monaco inadmissible.
The case concerned a decision by the Monegasque authorities not to renew the secondment of the applicant, a French judge acting as an investigating judge in Monaco. The applicant complained to the Court, alleging a breach of the right to a fair hearing as guaranteed by the Convention.
The Court declared the application in the case of Ceort v. Romania inadmissible.
The case concerned the criminal conviction of a public prosecutor at the High Court of Cassation and Justice, for soliciting a bribe. Relying on the right to a fair trial, the applicant complained that the criminal proceedings against him had been unfair.
The Court found that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies for his complaints concerning his lawyers’ access to his case file and his first-instance conviction by a “nonspecialised” three-judge bench. It also found that his allegations regarding the evidence, the use of a co-defendant’s statements and police entrapment were manifestly ill-founded.
Communication of cases
The Court has communicated to the Government of Türkiye five cases covering 1,000 other applications.
The applications concern convictions for membership of an armed terrorist organisation, based on the alleged use of the encrypted messaging application called ByLock.
The core issues raised by the applicants have already been judged in the Court’s Grand Chamber case Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye. In that judgment the Court highlighted that there were over 8,000 applications on the Court’s docket involving similar complaints. These 1,000 apparently comparable applications are the third batch to be notified to the Turkish Government. Against that background, the Court decided not to put any questions to the parties or to require any observations on the applications.
Hearings
The Court held a Grand Chamber hearing in the case of Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia.
This Inter-State case covers complaints concerning the Russian military operations in Ukraine since 24 February 2022 and the conflict in eastern Ukraine involving pro-Russian separatists which began in 2014, including the downing of Flight MH17.
Other News
On 4 September 2024, the President of the Court, Marko Bošnjak, delivered a keynote speech at the Faculty of Law, Political Science and Management of the University of Strasbourg, on the occasion of the start of the academic year of the Master II "Droit des Libertés".
- Speech by President Marko Bošnjak (in French only)
The Judge elected in respect of Liechtenstein, Alain Chablais, and the Judge elected in respect of Latvia, Artūrs Kučs, were formally sworn in in the Court's Main Hearing Room.
On 13 August 2024 the President of the Court, Marko Bošnjak, took part in a bilateral meeting with Andreja Katič, Minister of Justice of Slovenia, in Ljubljana. Milan Brglez, State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, also attended the meeting.