The European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court that interprets the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court hears applications alleging that a contracting state has breached one or more of the human rights enumerated in the convention or its optional protocols to which a member state is a party. We represent individuals and legal persons before the ECHR who have suffered human rights violations. Anybody can turn to us who considers that their right was infringed or who was treated unfairly.
We can help identify if there is a successful prospect of submitting an application to the Court and we can provide the necessary representation.
We have a long list of successful cases and several ongoing cases. We have also helped to reach a settlement between our client and the State.
UN Treaty Bodies
The UN human rights system consists of human rights treaties specialized in certain areas.
These often provide more detailed protection to specific victims or against specific types of human rights abuses than the European Convention on Human Rights.
These are the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
We have experience litigating all these bodies and can help you explore whether they could provide useful remedies in your specific case.
European Court of Justice
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) interprets EU law to make sure it is applied in the same way in all EU countries and settles legal disputes between national governments and EU institutions.
The CJEU enforces the EU law in various categories of proceedings, some of which can be applied by individuals under certain circumstances. We have experience in seeking preliminary references from national courts to the CJEU for our clients. We also offer consultancy to other law firms on how to develop the litigation strategy in order to ask the domestic court to refer the case before them to the CJEU.
In environmental matters, we have extensive experience in developing litigation strategies before the CJEU. The Aarhus Regulation provides a unique internal review request procedure for environmental matters only, where NGOs can ask the Commission to re-evaluate its policy on environmental questions. This procedure can lead opens the door to the CJEU. We can help NGOs to develop such requests and take advantage of the easement provided by the Aarhus system.