Swiss Government Rebuffs ECHR Climate Ruling: Next Stop Strasbourg

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Five months after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) took Switzerland to task for its climate action, the government in Bern has hit back abruptly – Swiss policies are not inadequate, it says.

Originally from Ireland, Domhnall worked in research and writing in a couple of European countries before joining swissinfo in 2017. He covers direct democracy and Politics and is usually in Bern.

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When the ECHR ruled earlier this year that Switzerland had violated citizens' rights by failing to take adequate climate action, reactions came thick and fast. Environmentalists welcomed what they saw as a trailblazing verdict, the right-wing People's Party advocated completely leaving the Council of Europe (to which the ECHR is affiliated), while parliament rebuffed what it saw as“judicial activism” by the Strasbourg court.

Meanwhile, the Swiss government – the ultimate target of the judgement – stayed above the fray, assessing its options: take steps to implement the (binding) ruling, follow parliament's confrontational course, or find a compromise?

On Wednesday, it opted to dig its heels in. In a clarifying statement outlining its position, it politely yet firmly disagreedExternal link with the ruling: while it“acknowledged” the importance of the European Convention on Human Rights, it criticised the court's“broad interpretation” of it – both in extending it to the field of climate protection and by enlarging the right of appeal to associations (in this case, the Swiss Climate Seniors Association, who brought the initial case in Strasbourg).

Moreover, the government said, it did not agree that Swiss climate policy was inadequate. Neither the revised CO2 Act , passed in parliament in March, nor the new electricity law were taken into account by the April verdict. All things considered, ministers wrote,“the Federal Council is of the opinion that Switzerland fulfils the climate policy requirements of the [ECHR] ruling” – a position it will present in more detail at the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers later this year.

This content was published on Apr 9, 2024 The European Court of Human Rights says the Swiss authorities are responsible for not implementing efficient climate change policies and for violating the right to life of a group of elderly women.

Whether it will be successful in convincing the other 45 member states of the organisation remains to be seen. Sébastien Duyck from the Geneva-based Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) reckons a strong reaction can be expected when Switzerland argues its case at the Committee of Ministers in Autumn (it has to produce a detailed report on how it is implementing the verdict by October 9).

The Swiss position amounts to a“worrying rejection” of the ECHR ruling and a surprisingly broad attack on the legitimacy of the court, Duyck says. As such, he hopes that other states will remind Switzerland of its obligations.“The credibility of the human rights framework in Europe relies on the fact that when it makes a decision, governments work in good faith to implement it,” the lawyer says.“If governments basically start rejecting its conclusions, this will undermine the whole system”.

However, Duyck adds, given what he terms the political – rather than legal or evidence-based – nature of the government's position, it is unlikely to have a direct impact on climate jurisprudence as such, either at the ECHR, or on other pending international casesExternal link , such as at the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, or the European Union's Court of Justice .

For its part, the Swiss Human Rights Institution (SHRI), a national oversight body, wroteExternal link on Wednesday that the“ambiguous and insufficient” government response would in all likelihood“not satisfy the Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe”. The ECHR took Switzerland to task on a concrete issue, the SHRI wrote: the country's lack of a carbon budget for tracking emissions. But there is no mention of this in the government's response. The issue is thus likely to come up at the Council of Europe again in the future – and again fire up anti-ECHR sentiments back in Switzerland.

“By making minimal commitments to implement the ruling, the government could therefore indirectly strengthen the position of those who are calling for Switzerland to distance itself from, or even leave, the ECHR,” it wrote.

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