Human Rights

New EU Emissions Rules Target Coal Plants

August 03, 2017

EurActiv reports that new rules from the European Commission requiring power plants to significantly decrease pollutants will cost an estimated €15 billion in compliance and could force the majority of the EU's coal plants to close.
ECJ Official Seeks Looser Rules for Migrant Spouses

August 02, 2017

In a May opinion, an Advocate General for the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) found that EU law prohibited the UK from restricting the right of the spouse of a person who migrated from Spain to remain in that country solely on the basis that the Spanish migrant had become a naturalized citizen of the UK and was therefore no longer the beneficiary of rules on "free movement."
FRA Calls for EU "Strategic Framework" on Rights

August 02, 2017

In its 2017 Fundamental Rights Report, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) calls on the EU to create an "internal strategic framework for fundamental rights" to ensure the implementation of the global human rights agenda within the bloc.
CoE Official Seeks Reform of Swiss Migration Policies

August 02, 2017

Following a visit to Switzerland, the Council of Europe's (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks called on the country's government to reform its legislation to ensure that it offers special protection to "vulnerable" migrants arriving in its territory and criticized what he perceived to be inadequate funding for the country's national human rights institution.
FRA Seeks Deepened Cooperation on Rights Agenda

August 02, 2017

At the latest meeting of the agency's management board, leaders of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) called for more institutionalized cooperation between the FRA, European national human rights institutions, and European "equality bodies," all of which seek to mainstream the modern human rights agenda in European countries.
ECtHR: Russia Failed to Review Electoral Irregularities

August 02, 2017

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that the Russian authorities failed to seriously review the alleged manipulation of city and state election results in St. Petersburg in 2011, finding that the voiding of over 50,000 votes and discrepancies between voting counts justified an investigation to satisfy the complainants' right to free elections.
ECtHR: Spain Violated Privacy Rights in Child Pornography Investigation

August 02, 2017

In a May judgment, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that Spanish law enforcement authorities had violated a man's privacy rights by searching his computer, which was given to them by a computer technician who had discovered child pornography among its files, prior to obtaining authorization from a judge.
ECtHR: Lithuanian Life Sentences Violate Rights

August 02, 2017

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that various measures permitting the review in Lithuania of prisoners' life sentences for aggravated offenses, including a presidential pardon process, did not allow these prisoners a sufficient prospect of release as required by European human rights law.
UK Governing Party Delays Human Rights Reform

July 31, 2017

The Daily Telegraph reports that, in the lead-up to the British general election in June, the currently governing Conservative Party asserted in its manifesto that it would only consider repealing the UK Human Rights Act, which transposes the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law, after the country leaves the EU.
UK Pushes Back on Post-Brexit ECJ Role in Britain

July 26, 2017

The BBC reports that UK Brexit Secretary David Davis is pushing back on demands by the European Parliament's top Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, and other EU officials that, following Brexit, the UK subordinate its courts to the authority of the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) on issues relating to the rights of EU citizens.