Can the right to a healthy environment be incorporated into the European Convention on Human Rights? The issue had already been the subject of a conference organised last February at the Council of Europe. On Monday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) took up the issue in a video conference entitled “Human Rights for the Planet”.
Reference was made to the case law of international instruments, including that of the Strasbourg Court which, unlike the American and African Courts, does not have an additional protocol enshrining the right to a healthy environment in its reference Convention. However, the ECHR has not remained inactive. Since the 1970s, it has ruled on cases relating to environmental damage, but it can only do so in a roundabout - and therefore limited - way, using Articles 2 (right to life, invoked very exceptionally) and 8 (right to private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Another obstacle: the Court can only be appealed by a natural person or persons, which prohibits a legal person (association or NGO) from turning to it in the context of an actio popularis.
According to Rik Daems, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, “a new protocol in the European Convention on Human Rights would give an additional push to governments and parliaments to develop ‘green’ laws, strengthen their accountability for any failure to take action, and give courts a solid legal basis for adjudicating environmental cases”.
While the assembly is determined to move forward, the same cannot be said of the executive side, as “there is no agreement in the Committee of Ministers”, warned Panagiotis Beglitis, Greece’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe. Under the Georgian Presidency, it had been impossible to get the 47 Member States to adopt a Declaration linking human rights and the environment, he recalled, and it had been necessary to “make do” with a Political Declaration from the previous Georgian Presidency, the current Greek Presidency and the future German Presidency. They share the objective of “greening” the European Convention on Human Rights, but we already know that the Hungarian Presidency that will succeed them is more than reluctant to do so.
According to Panagiotis Beglitis, a favourable balance of power in favour of a binding legal instrument cannot be expected in the near future. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)