ABSTRACT

In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights’ case law continued to raise significant questions about the nature of criminal fair trial rights under Article 6. This contribution considers the Court's recent case law on Article 6, with a particular emphasis on developments in cases such as Beuze v Belgium of November 2018. This contribution argues that the Court continues to undermine the text of the Convention through its interpretation of Article 6's ‘internal structure,’ with undesirable consequences for assessing violations in future applications. Moreover, the contribution argues that the case law demonstrates dangerously greater willingness to countenance public interest justifications and balancing in the context of Article 6. The finding in Beuze was that Belgium had violated Article 6 rights; the legacy of Beuze and the trends evident in the 2018 case law will be that governments in future applications will find it increasingly easy to justify infringements of those rights. Despite its protestations to the contrary, it seems that the Court intends to convert Article 6 into a two-word ‘fair trial’ guarantee, under which every application boils down to whether or not the overall proceedings were fair. This should trouble those who take an interest in the most heavily-litigated provision of the Convention.