They are six young Portuguese people aged 11 to 24 who are determined to prove that “climate inaction” has consequences on their health and living conditions. At their request, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will examine, Wednesday, September 27, the greenhouse gas emissions of thirty-two states. The case, which arrived before the ECHR in 2020, benefited from priority treatment.
The applicants accuse the twenty-seven states of the European Union as well as Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom of not respecting the commitments they made within the framework of the Paris climate agreement. The 2015 text aimed to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era.
These young people assure that “climate inaction” has consequences on their lives and that this constitutes a violation in particular of the “right to life” and the “right to respect for private life” enshrined in the European Convention for the Protection of Rights of man.
“Without urgent action to reduce emissions, the place where I live will soon become an unbearable furnace,” argues Martim Duarte Agostinho, 20, who gave his name to the case. “It pains me to know that European governments could do so much more to prevent this and are choosing not to. »
He and the five other plaintiffs began the process of going to court after experiencing firsthand the fires that burned tens of thousands of hectares and killed more than 100 people in their country, Portugal, in 2017.
Their approach “could represent a decisive step forward in climate litigation,” believes Catherine Higham, political science researcher at the London School of Economics. “If successful, governments will need to change course and reduce emissions more quickly to show compliance. »
A “David versus Goliath” affair
At the headquarters of the ECHR, in Strasbourg, several dozen lawyers and jurists are expected to defend the cause of the States against the six young people, who, for their part, did not fail to seek the support of NGOs and ecological cause activists all over Europe.
“It’s a David versus Goliath case,” likes to compare Gearoid O Cuinn, director of the British NGO Global Legal Action Network (Glan), which supports and defends the six plaintiffs. “This is a matter unprecedented in its scale and its consequences. »
But, before ruling on the merits, the Court will first examine the admissibility of the request, according to strict criteria which cause many cases to be rejected each year. And in this unprecedented procedure, particularly due to the number of States concerned, the question should be vigorously debated.
The ECHR usually requires that applicants have exhausted remedies before the national courts before turning to it. However, here, the six complainants directly contacted the institution: conducting separate procedures in each of the thirty-two countries concerned would, according to them, represent an “excessive and disproportionate burden”, which they therefore exempted themselves from.
If the case is deemed admissible, then the decision, expected at best in 2024, will be scrutinized: the court’s jurisprudence on global warming is still virgin. In their approach, the plaintiffs also attracted the attention of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, who sent observations to the court. She believes that judges must “provide concrete protection to people who suffer the consequences of climate change”.
The first two climate cases targeting Switzerland and France were examined in March by the ECHR, which has not yet ruled. In the United States, this summer, young Americans from the state of Montana won a historic victory in terms of “climate inaction”. A judge declared unconstitutional a law prohibiting local administration from taking into account the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate when granting or not permits to fossil fuel companies.