This is an unprecedented hearing which took place at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). She is invited to define her jurisprudence regarding the climate inaction of 32 States, targeted by six young Portuguese people. The Grand Chamber hearing, involving 17 judges, was opened by the president of the institution, the Irishwoman Siofra O’Leary, this Wednesday morning at the court’s headquarters in Strasbourg.
“The case concerns the impact of climate change that the applicants consider to be attributable to the States, in particular the phenomena of global warming resulting in heat waves and forest fires affecting their lives and their health,” explained Siofra O’Leary.
Defense arsenal
More than 80 lawyers and jurists representing the 32 accused states (the 27 members of the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Russia) were present at the hearing. Ukraine, against which the six applicants abandoned their claims, was not represented, nor was Russia.
The debates mainly focused on the question of the admissibility of the file, strongly contested by the respondent States. “We can congratulate these young people for their commitment to this cause, which cannot be ignored,” said Ricardo Matos, representative of the Portuguese government. “But in this case, they have not proven harm. Their arguments focus on the impacts of climate change, but do not prove that they are personal victims. Mere conjectures are not enough.”
Repercussions on younger generations
Lawyers for the six Portuguese aged 11 to 24 called on the Court not to “look away”. Refusing to grant them protection “would mean saying that the problem is too big, too complicated and that human rights (…) are at the end of the line,” declared Alison Macdonald. She stressed that a “ton of greenhouse gas emitted in France has the same effect as a ton coming from Portugal”, and that Portugal did not “have the capacity, on its own, to protect the applicants “.
His colleague Amy Sander argued that the plaintiffs’ approach was “essential to guarantee effective protection” of the rights enshrined in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, in particular the “right to life” (article 2), and the “right to respect for private life” (article 8). “It is the children who will pay the price for the inadequacy of the measures” taken against climate change, explained the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatovic. “It is crucial that young people have access to justice and are heard.”