Breakfast Briefing with Isabella Risini

Inter-State Applications before the European Court of Human Rights

During the last seven decades, states have referred more than 35 situations to the former Commission and to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Certainly, compared to some 750,000 individual applications, the number looks small. However, the inter-state applications have had an impact for a large number of individuals. Many of the cases also had important political ramifications and shaped the present supervisory architecture of the Convention.

The past few years have seen a steep rise in the number of inter-state cases, especially in relation to the conflicts in Eastern Ukraine and Nagorno Karabakh. This development has led to a reform initiative within the Council of Europe, which was the subject of a major conference on inter-state cases under the ECHR, held in April 2021 and hosted by Isabella Risini.

During her presentation, Isabella will put a particular focus on the most recent inter-state application, lodged on 22 July 2021 by Russia against Ukraine. She will discuss its relationship with those applications previously filed against Russia by Ukraine and the Netherlands. The material and procedural challenges inter-state applications may pose for the ECtHR, and some possible ways forward, round off the agenda.

About the speaker:

Dr. Isabella Risini, LL.M. is a visiting professor at the University of Augsburg (Germany) and a senior research associate at the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany). She is one of the leading experts on inter-state proceedings and the author of The Inter-State Application under the European Convention on Human Rights (Brill 2018). Isabella holds a law degree from the University of Augsburg and an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, and obtained her doctoral degree at Ruhr-University Bochum. In addition, she completed her practical legal training in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Munich and the German Foreign Office in Berlin, and worked as a trainee at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

For participation in this event, please use this registration form no later than 3 November 2021. (You will receive the Zoom link right after you register)

See a list of all the Breakfast Briefings for fall 2021.