La climate change litigation “sbarca” a Strasburgo: brevi riflessioni a margine delle tre recenti sentenze della Corte EDU

Climate change litigation "lands" in Strasbourg: brief reflections on the margin of the three recent judgments of the ECtHR

Abstract

On 9 April the European Court of Human Rights ruled on three cases concerning climate change. The three decisions look very interesting - even if the Court upheld the appeal in one case only and rejected it in the other two – because it is the first time that the European Court of Human Rights rules on disputes concerning the consequences of change climate. Until now, the issue of intergenerational responsibility and its legal basis to be found in the conventional text had not, in fact, been addressed by the Strasbourg jurisprudence. Let aside Strasbourg's "political" choice to consider, in two out of three cases, the relative limits of admissibility, today the Court seems to have accepted the challenge of interfacing with a new controversy: the climate one.

Keywords: Climate change; Climate litigation; European court of human rights; Human rights; Procedural defects.