European Court of Human Rights. Photo(c): Winfried Rothermel/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved. These are unsettling times for the human rights system which covers the whole European continent — 47 states from Ireland to Russia, from Norway to Turkey. Hostile politicians and commentators are wont to rail against judges sitting on the Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights, arguing that they unjustifiably extend their purview into sovereign, domestic affairs. The Court’s position as the legitimate apex of human rights adjudication is now further under threat by the rise of European populism and the far right, as well as the fallout from Brexit. The deluge of cases from Turkey after mass arrests following the failed coup in 2016, the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, and Russia’s unprecedented 2015 law that allows its Constitutional Court to pick and choose which European Court judgments to implement, have put further strain on the Court.
Human rights are under serious challenge too in the European Union. Given, the executive’s exertion of control of the Constitutional Tribunal at the behest of the ruling Law and Justice Party in Poland, and the machinations of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal regime in Hungary (characterised as “rule of law backsliding” and creeping autocracy within the EU), as we scan the European horizon these days is it right to ask if the very principle of the rule of law is under threat?
Last week’s judgment from the Strasbourg Court’s Grand Chamber concerning the circumstances of the criminal prosecution of Ivane Merabishvili, the former Minister of Interior and Prime Minister of Georgia, represents a significant moment and, indeed, test for democracy and the rule of law in Georgia.
