Jesus Pinhal v. Portugal
Need for fair balance between combating crime and right not to be tried twice for the same offence: Court finds no violation in case where applicant prosecuted in several sets of proceedings.
In the case of Jesus Pinhal v. Portugal the Court held that there had been no violation of the right not to be tried or punished twice.
The case concerned the right not to be tried or punished twice and known as the “ne bis in idem” principle.
The applicant had been a member and Vice-Chairman of the Banco Comercial Português bank (“the BCP”). Following a complaint, the Lisbon public prosecutor’s office, the Securities Market Commission (CMVM) and the Portuguese central bank (BdP) initiated proceedings against him for various criminal and administrative offences. Before the Court, the applicant argued that he had been tried three times for the same acts. The Court used this occasion to clarify the criteria to be applied in striking a fair balance between ensuring that all forms of crime were punished effectively and respect for the fundamental right not to be tried twice for the same acts.
Chamber News
Swiss authorities’ overly formalistic approach to complaints about lack of access to vegan diet while in detention breached European Convention.
In the case of G.K. and A.S. v. Switzerland the Court held that there had been violations of the right to freedom of thought and conscience and of the right to an effective remedy. The case concerned the failure to provide the applicants with a vegan diet while they had been in the care of the State. The first applicant had been in pre-trial detention, while the second had been confined in a psychiatric hospital. Despite making requests, the applicants did not receive entirely vegan diets. However, no formal administrative “decisions” had been taken which could have been appealed against under national law and which would have enabled the Swiss courts to examine the merits of their complaints.
The Court found that the Swiss authorities’ reaction to the applicants’ case had been overly formalistic. As a result, the legal avenues the applicants had used were ineffective in practice. It also meant that the applicants’ complaints regarding access to a vegan diet, in keeping with their ethical beliefs, while in the care of the authorities, had never been examined at national level.
Death of Roma man following use of prone position by police – failure by authorities to protect life and effectively investigate use of force and potential discriminatory motives.
In the case of S.T. v. the Czech Republic the Court held that there had been several violations of the Convention.
The case concerned the applicant’s complaints about the use of force against her brother, a Roma man who died in 2021 following a police intervention, and the investigation into the actions of the police officers involved.
No legal basis for Russian authorities to deprive applicants of their ownership of plots of land in Sevastopol.
In the case of Bazhenov and Others v. Russia and Ukraine, the Court held that there had been several violations of the Convention.
The case concerned the Russian authorities’ cancellation of the applicants’ titles to plots of land in Sevastopol, Crimea between 2015-2017. The plots had originally been transferred into private ownership by the Ukrainian authorities. The Russian authorities reclaimed them as public property on the basis that they were forest lands and as such should have never been privatised.
European Court decides to hold a hearing on Ukrainian children from Crimean childcare institutions officially unaccounted for since 2014.
The ECHR has decided to hold a hearing on 22 September 2026 in the case Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union on behalf of ten Ukrainian children v. Russia.
The case concerns ten Ukrainian children who were living in childcare institutions in Crimea in 2014 when Russia asserted jurisdiction over the peninsula. According to the association (UHHRU) acting on their behalf, Russian nationality was imposed on the children and they were put up for adoption and may have been adopted. There has been no information on their whereabouts since 2014, despite the Ukrainian authorities’ repeated requests. UHHRU allege that this effectively amounts to the children’s enforced disappearance.
Grand Chamber News
The Court will be delivering a Grand Chamber ruling in the case of Jesus Pinhal v. Portugal on 9 July 2026.
The case concerns three sets of proceedings brought against the applicant by the criminal-law authorities, the Securities Market Commission and the Bank of Portugal, respectively, for criminal and administrative offences committed while he was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of a private bank, Banco Comercial Português, S.A.
- Press release
- Webcast of the hearing (17/09/2025)
- Country profile: Portugal
Announcement of a Grand Chamber case concerning the search of a Masonic association’s premises.
The Court will be delivering a Grand Chamber ruling in the case of Grande Oriente d’Italia v. Italy on 7 July 2026.
The case concerns the search – ordered by a parliamentary commission of inquiry in the context of a parliamentary inquiry into mafia-type organised crime – of the applicant association’s premises, and the subsequent seizure of numerous paper and digital documents, in particular lists containing the names and personal data of more than 6,000 members of the applicant association.
- Press release
- Webcast of the hearing (19/11/2025)
- Country profile: Italy
Hearings
The Court held a Grand Chamber hearing in the case of S.O. v. Spain.
The case concerns the removal of the applicant’s nipple and areola, allegedly carried out without her consent, during an operation to save her breasts from cancer, and subsequent court proceedings.
Decisions
The ECHR has declared the application in the case of Mouelhi v. Belgium inadmissible.
The case concerned an applicant for international protection who complained that he had not been provided with accommodation or material assistance in Belgium, as required by law, despite the final judgment of the Brussels French-Language Employment Tribunal.
The Court found that the applicant’s conduct amounted to abuse of the right of individual application. It noted that the applicant had deliberately attempted to mislead it by submitting false information in support of his request for an interim measure, in which he had stated that he was reduced to living on the streets in Belgium, when it could be seen from the documents submitted later by the respondent Government that he had been accommodated as an applicant for international protection in the Netherlands for nearly five months. Moreover, he had not corrected this information in the application form submitted after requesting the interim measure nor when he had updated his file at the Court’s request. On the contrary, he had expressly reiterated that he was still having to sleep on the streets.
The Court has declared the application in the case of Vendrame and Others v. Italy inadmissible.
The application concerned the imposition of land-use restrictions on private plots of land belonging to two of the applicants due to the incorporation of the land into a newly instituted nature reserve. The land was being used by the other applicant, an agricultural company, for poplar harvesting. In October 2011, a request by the company for authorisation from the municipality of Codroipo to replant a poplar grove on the land was refused for incompatibility with the land-use restrictions.
The applicants lodged proceedings challenging the incorporation of the land in the nature reserve, arguing, amongst other things, that that they had not been provided with compensation for such restrictions. The domestic courts dismissed their action, noting that the restrictions did not give rise to a right to compensation, as they had not been imposed with a view to expropriating the land. However, other allowances were available instead.
Paying particular regard to the State’s leeway in the context of environmental protection policies, the Court considered that a fair balance had been struck between the general interest and the applicants’ right to decide how to use their land.
The ECHR has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Macovei v. Romania.
The case concerned proceedings brought by the applicant, a politician, to challenge sanctions imposed on her for having violated the rules on election financing during her 2014 presidential campaign.
The Court held that the applicant’s actions and the sanctions imposed on her related to electoral misconduct. The actions were not classified as “criminal” under Romanian law since the domestic authorities did not consider them to be criminal offences, but only minor offences. Also, they were not criminal in nature.
- Press release
- Press release (in Romanian)
The Court has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Fliegenschnee and Others v. Austria.
The case concerned the Austrian Federal Minister for Economic and Digital Affairs’ refusal to ban the sale of fossil fuels to mitigate the impact of climate change as she was not competent in that regard.
The Court found that the three individual applicants who had brought the case had not provided evidence to show that they had been personally affected by climate change, either because of their age or health issues or owing to crop shortfalls caused by drought. They could not therefore claim to be victims of a violation of the right to respect for private and family life or the protection of property and those complaints were inadmissible.
As concerned the remaining applicant, Umweltschutzorganisation Global 2000, the Court considered that it was not necessary to decide whether it had standing to bring its complaints under Article 8 of the Convention because they were inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded. In particular Article 8 did not guarantee the right to a specific measure, namely a ban on the sale of fossil fuels under the Austrian Trade Act.
The Court has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Văscăuţanu v. Romania.
The case concerned the effectiveness of a preventive remedy, namely an application to a post-sentencing judge. The purpose of the remedy was to put an end to situations breaching rights to prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment where prisoners had alleged poor conditions of detention while serving their prison terms.
The Court noted that an application to a post-sentencing judge was an effective preventive remedy to be used, from 6 April 2023 onwards, by anyone complaining of poor conditions of detention. That remedy was complementary to the compensatory remedy available to people who alleged that they had been detained in conditions breaching the European Convention but were no longer in that situation at the time they brought their action. The applicant, however, had failed to make use of either of those effective remedies – both of which had been available to him and had offered reasonable prospects of success – at any time during his detention in various prisons.
- Press release
- Press release (in Romanian)
The Court has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Fillon and Others v. France.
The application essentially concerned the fairness of the trial of the three applicants who had all been convicted of embezzlement of public funds, handling of those funds or complicity in the offence.
The Court noted, first, that the applicants’ allegation of a lack of independence and impartiality in the preliminary investigation stage of the proceedings against them was not manifestly ill-founded and that it was not its task to intervene in the national debate concerning reform of the public prosecution service in France. It then held that the criminal proceedings in question, taken as a whole, had been fair within the meaning of the Convention.
The Court has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Otegi Mondragón and Others v. Spain.
The case concerned the review proceedings following the ECHR’s 2018 judgment Otegi Mondragón and Others v. Spain, in which the Court found a violation of the Convention on the grounds that the applicants, five Spaniards, had not been tried by an impartial tribunal when convicted by the Audiencia Nacional (National High Court) in 2011 for being members of the terrorist organisation ETA.
Other News
Lorraine Schembri Orland, judge elected in respect of Malta, participated in a roundtable discussion on deepfake technologies and gender-based violence, organised by the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry on 14 July 2026. This was part of its Together We Empower-A Future without Violence programme.
The roundtable addressed the topic of the State’s duty (positive obligation) to protect, the challenges posed by misinformation, the gaps in current national legislation that do not properly address deepfakes, how easy creating deepfakes has become, and the effects on victims, such as shame and self-blame. It brought together key stakeholders from business, government, civil society, and technical fields to establish a structured, evidence-based platform for dialogue, to promote national legislation on deepfakes, and to encourage coordinated sectoral responses.
The invited guest speakers addressed both legal and social realities. In her speech, Judge Schembri Orland referred to a number of cases decided by the Court that provided case-law on the State’s positive obligation to protect. These included Opuz v. Turkey, Valiulienė v. Lithuania, Talpis v. Italy, and Volodina v. Russia.
The concluding address demonstrated how the sophistication and accessibility of generative AI now allowed almost anyone to create convincing fake images, audio, and video, and led to the conclusion that Malta must act fast on deepfakes and gender-based violence.
Davor Derenčinović, judge elected in respect of Croatia, and Canòlic Mingorance Cairat, judge elected in respect of Andorra, participated in an international congress on International Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability: The Role of International Courts in the Defence of Peace, organised on 3 July 2026 in Barcelona by the International Criminal Bar and the Council of Catalan Bar Associations.
At the opening of the conference, Judge Derenčinović spoke about The Global System for the Protection of Human Rights: The Role of International Courts in the Defence of Human Dignity. He highlighted that the term “dignity” appears in numerous international and regional texts and instruments, and noted that it has frequently been used in the Court’s reasoning and case-law, particularly in cases concerning the use of force by State agents, the use of metal cages at trial, military service, life imprisonment, forced sterilisation, and issues of consent. He also referred to recent Grand Chamber judgments addressing the concept of dignity, such as Semenya v. Switzerland, Danileț v. Romania and Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia.
Judge Mingorance Cairat took part in a roundtable discussion that addressed topics such as the challenges faced by the Court in ensuring effective human rights protection; the balance between States’ margin of appreciation and the need for effective judicial supervision; the Court’s role in situations of armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies; ways to properly incorporate the Convention and the Court’s case-law into the daily practice of lawyers and national courts; and the most significant Court judgments from the past year with a direct impact on human rights protection.