Dal caos all’ordine (e viceversa): l’impatto del trittico della Corte EDU sul contenzioso climatico europeo di diritto privato

From Chaos to Order (and Back Again): The Impact of ECHR’s Triptych on European Tort-Based Climate Change Litigation

Abstract

On April 9, 2024, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its first decisions on climate change. The three cases have long been in the spotlight, both for their media impact and for their possible implications for climate change litigation in Europe. The Court ruled only on the merits of the case brought by an association of older women against Switzerland (KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz). It declared inadmissible the remaining two cases, one brought by six Portuguese children against Portugal and 32 other European states, and the other filed by the mayor of Grande-Synthe against France. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the three decisions, focusing in particular on the ruling against the Swiss Confederation. The decision is crucial in many respects, but first and foremost because it found that Articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR, according to an evolutionary interpretation, include climate protection and impose positive obligations on States in this field. After summarizing the main points of the judgment, the article aims to provide a key to understanding how the ECtHR decision was influenced by the widespread climate litigation at the national level, and how the latter, especially tort-based litigation, will inevitably be affected by the Court’s judgment.

Keywords: Climate change litigation; Human rights and climate protection; ECHR and comparative law; Anthropic climate changes; Legal mutation