Violations of the European Convention for failing to implement sufficient measures to combat climate change, the court ruled
Photo: @Klimaseniorin / X (formerly Twitter) The Swiss civil society group, Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz), secured a historic win April 9, 2024, with the European Court of Human Rights pulling up Switzerland for not doing enough to tackle global warming.
The court said that the Swiss Confederation had failed to comply with its duties (positive obligations) under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) concerning climate change.
ECHR talks about the right of an individual to respect for private and family life, and it is the duty of the State to provide effective protection from the adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life. Such rights and that to access to the court of the members of the association have been violated, the court said.
Judgment Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland - Violations of the Convention for failing to implement sufficient measures to combat climate changehttps://t.co/9yp2paHV4I#ECHR #CEDH #ECHRpress pic.twitter.com/q7DE9m81IZ
— ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) April 9, 2024
The court found that Article 6 § 1 of the Convention applied to the applicant association’s complaint concerning effective implementation of the mitigation measures under existing domestic law. The Swiss courts had not provided convincing reasons as to why they had considered it unnecessary to examine the merits of the applicant association’s complaints. They had failed to take into consideration the compelling scientific evidence concerning climate change and had not taken the complaints seriously.
Switzerland was also directed to pay the association a compensation of “EUR 80,000 (eighty thousand euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable, in respect of costs and expenses” within three months.
The court observed that the government relied on the 2012 Policy Brief to justify the absence of any specific carbon budget for Switzerland. “The government suggested that there was no established methodology to determine a country’s carbon budget and acknowledged that Switzerland had not determined one,” said the 260 page judgment.
The case originated in an application against the Swiss Confederation lodged with the court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms by Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and four Swiss nationals, all members of that association, on November 26, 2020.
The association comprises more than 2,000 older women (a third of them over 75) and the four other women, all members of the associatio and aged over 80. They complained of health problems that are exacerbated during heatwaves, significantly affecting their lives, living conditions and well-being.
The European Court of Human Rights, however, dismissed two other similar applications against France and Portugal on procedural grounds.
In Careme vs France, a former inhabitant and mayor of Grande-Synthe municipality had submitted that France had taken insufficient measures to prevent global warming and that it violates the right to life and the right to respect for private and family life. The Court declared the application inadmissible on the ground that the applicant did not have victim status within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention.
In the other case, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and 32 others, the applicants claimed the ongoing and future effects of climate change are impacting their lives, well-being, mental health and the peaceful enjoyment of their homes.
Their case was not only against Portugal but every European Union country, plus Council of Europe members Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The court threw out this application since “there were no grounds in the Convention for the extension of their extraterritorial jurisdiction in the manner requested by the applicants”.
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