Meeting with representatives with United Nations Treaty bodies
On 30 June 2026, the Court hosted a meeting of judges with representatives with United Nations human rights treaty bodies. The meeting, organised with the support of the René Cassin Foundation and the French National Institute of Public Service (INSP), followed a symposium organised on the previous day to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of former Court President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, René Cassin.
During the meeting, the Court’s judges and the chairs and representatives of the UN Treaty Bodies exchanged views on various human rights issues and respective jurisprudential developments. The forward-looking discussions focused on identifying avenues for closer engagement and the use of jurisprudence, recommendations, and expertise, for a more coherent and effective human rights protection.
Noting that the United Nations is a key partner of the Court, President Mattias Guyomar said that the meeting was an opportunity to nourish dialogue and emphasised that the Court often referred to the case law of the UN Treaty Bodies in its judgments.
Changrok Soh, Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee and Chair of the 38th Meeting of Chairs of the UN Treaty Bodies, also addressed the participants online. His intervention was followed by a working session chaired by the Vice President of the Court and judge elected in respect of Montenegro, Ivana Jelić, on issues relating to the functioning, challenges, and cooperation between institutions. The session featured contributions from Vasilka Sancin, judge elected in respect of Slovenia, and Hélène Tigroudja, Vice Chair of the Human Rights Committee, whose interventions centred on coordination and cooperation between the UN Treaty Bodies and the Court, as well as practical proposals for future action.
The second working session, chaired by Anja Seibert Fohr, judge elected in respect of Germany, focused on the topic of non discrimination in times of disruption and uncertainty. Mykola Gnatovskyy, judge elected in respect of Ukraine, and Tina Stavrinaki, member of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and Chair of the Working Group on Individual Complaints, spoke about how the non discrimination standards set out by the UN and those developed by the Court in its case law under the Convention apply to today’s realities, including in the context of emerging technologies, climate change, and armed conflict.
Emmanuel Decaux, President of the René Cassin Foundation, delivered the closing remarks, highlighting the Foundation’s commitment to human rights protection in line with René Cassin’s legacy: fostering dialogue between institutions, bringing protection systems closer together, and working towards ever more effective guarantees of fundamental rights.
Chamber News
Annulment of presidential pardons was justified, but fair trial rights violated for two of the three applicants.
In the case of Taleski and Others v. North Macedonia the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to a fair trial on account of the legislative intervention permitting the annulment of the presidential pardons and the continuation of the criminal proceedings against the applicants. The Court also held that there had been:
- a violation of the right to a fair trial as regards the right to an adversarial trial on account of the failure to serve one of the applicants, with a copy of the higher prosecutor’s submissions; and
- a violation of the right to a fair trial as regards the right to an adversarial trial on account of the failure to serve another of the applicants, with a copy of the higher prosecutor’s submissions.
The case concerned a legislative intervention, the 2016 Pardon Act, which permitted the annulment of presidential pardons that had been granted to the applicants six weeks earlier and which, at the time, had been considered to be final and irrevocable. As a consequence, the pardons were annulled and the applicants, who were public officials, were prosecuted for abuse of official position and authority and various electoral offences. The case also concerned the fairness of those criminal proceedings.
Remedy for cramped conditions of detention ineffective for whole life sentence prisoner with no prospect of receiving compensation.
In the case of Ottlakán v. Hungary the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to an effective remedy read in conjunction with the right to prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment.
The case concerned the applicant’s complaint that he had not been able to access compensation awarded to him for cramped conditions of detention, because of legislation that had entered into force in 2021. Under that legislation such compensation is set aside in a holding account (administered by the prison) until the prisoner’s release.
The Court found that since there was no review mechanism of the applicant’s whole life sentence which could genuinely lead to his release, he had no prospect of receiving the compensation. Therefore, making the applicant’s release a condition for its payment to him went against the principle of promptness that was required for a remedy to be effective within the meaning of Article 13.
Belgrade COVID19 protestor’s conviction in 2020 decided in unfair proceedings.
In the case of Iskrenović v. Serbia the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to a fair trial / right to obtain attendance and examination of witnesses.
The case concerned the applicant’s conviction in 2020 in minor-offence proceedings for insulting the police, amid social unrest sparked by governmental restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Court found that the whole case had hinged on the credibility of the arresting police officer’s account which had differed from the one given by the applicant. The applicant’s request that the Serbian courts hear an eyewitness and obtain video footage from surveillance cameras had therefore been neither unreasonable nor vexatious. Such evidence could have shed light on whether the applicant had been near enough to the police officers to insult them or whether it had been the officers who had noticed him and then trailed him. The national courts had, however, failed to properly consider the relevance of such evidence and had not provided sufficient reasons for refusing to obtain and examine it. The applicant’s conviction had ultimately been based essentially on the testimony of the arresting police officer, making it impossible for the defence to effectively challenge the prosecution’s case which had undermined the overall fairness of the proceedings.
- Press release
- Press release (in Serbian)
- Factsheet: COVID-19
National court’s decision authorising applicant’s compulsory hospital admission to give birth had been reasonable in the circumstances.
In the case of C.P. v. Spain, the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to respect for private and family life.
The case concerned a woman’s compulsory admission to hospital to give birth pursuant to a judicial order, despite her wish to give birth at home, owing to a risk of foetal hypoxia and intrauterine foetal death.
The applicant had become pregnant in 2018 and had decided to give birth at home. In April 2019, when she was 42 weeks and two days pregnant, she attended a hospital check-up, during which a risk to both her and to her unborn child was identified. Following an urgent application by the hospital, a duty court ordered the applicant’s compulsory admission for labour to be induced if necessary.
The Court noted that the legal basis for the order had been extensively examined by the national courts. The Constitutional Court had found that, despite there being no specific legal provision for ordering compulsory admission to hospital for a birth classified as posing a risk to the life of the foetus, the legal framework relied on by the duty court had been reasonable and sufficient. The Constitutional Court had not reached that conclusion in an arbitrary or manifestly unforeseeable way, and that generally the national courts had interpreted and applied the law in an acceptable manner.
Grand Chamber News
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
The Court will deliver its ruling in writing in the case Vainik and Others v. Estonia on 30 June 2026.
The case concerns the total ban on smoking in prisons in Estonia from October 2017. The four applicants in the case, prisoners at the time, complained both about the ban itself and the withdrawal symptoms they had had.
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
On the opening day of the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty – being held in Paris from 30 June to 2 July 2026 and organised by the Together Against the Death Penalty association under the sponsorship of France, the European Union and Switzerland –, at which the President of the Republic delivered closing remarks, the President of the Court, Mattias Guyomar, took part in a plenary on the role of the judiciary as an actor of abolition. He sat on a panel, the subject of which was Regional courts and the impact of their decisions on the application of the death penalty, alongside Ms Veronica Gomez, Judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and Mr Dumisa Ntsebeza, Judge at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
In his speech, the President stressed that it continued to be fully relevant and was essential to join together, each entity within its respective capacity and all around the world, to work towards the universal abolition of the death penalty.
“Even in Europe, where there is no death penalty, we are seeing a resurgence in discourse advocating its reinstatement,” he warned, reminding those present of the role played by the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights in the abolition of the death penalty across the European continent.
Lastly, referring to the adoption of Protocols Nos. 6 and 13 and the evolution of the Court’s interpretation of Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, he emphasised that, by its very nature, the death penalty was incompatible with human dignity.
On 29 June 2026, the President of the Court, Mattias Guyomar, delivered a speech at the René Cassin Symposium, the theme of which was Universal human rights treaties at a crossroads: facing up to the challenges.
In his speech, the President emphasised that human rights had to be understood first and foremost as rights for all of humanity, universal in nature.
“They are fundamental rights, in that they are both rooted in the human person and are the foundation of humanity,” stated President Guyomar, adding that international and regional mechanisms for the protection of human rights shared a universal character.
“Our joint commitment will ensure that our shared ideals of peace and justice prevail,” the President said.
Following the President, Emmanuel Decaux, President of the René Cassin Foundation, Sébastien Touzé, Director of the René Cassin Foundation, and Linos Alexandre Sicilianos, professor at the University of Athens, former President of the European Court of Human Rights and member of ECRI, took the floor.
After the opening of the Symposium, a roundtable, chaired by Anja Seibert Fohr, judge elected in respect of Germany, was held on the universality of human rights treaties.
Vasilka Sancin, judge elected in respect of Slovenia, took part in a discussion on the nature of international human rights law, focusing on treaty bodies and the Court as they face emergencies and crises, including the return of war.
Ivana Jelić, Vice-President of the Court and judge elected in respect of Montenegro, presented the conclusions of the Symposium, an event organised in the context of the 50th anniversary of René Cassin’s death by the René Cassin Foundation, with the support of the National Institute of Public Service (Institut national du service public) and the European Court of Human Rights, and the “Strasbourg European Capital” triennial contract, under the academic supervision of Emmanuel Decaux and Sébastien Touzé.