ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been a challenging year for the protection of human rights in Europe and worldwide. Indeed, some Member States of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, or the Convention) notified derogations pursuant to Article 15 ECHR to the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe (CoE). In any case, it has been pointed out that in the protection of human rights, a ‘normal-as-usual’ approach should be adopted even in times of a pandemic, given that ‘the extraordinary nature of states of emergencies cannot and should not prevent human rights from performing their normal role in society’.

Moreover, the measures that have been adopted in order to contain the spread of the virus – namely, strict lockdowns – also affected the capacity of national and international justice systems to function, therefore affecting the capacity of victims of (past) human rights violations to obtain justice and reparation. However, except for a temporary suspension of procedural time limits, during the pandemic the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, the Court) continued to handle its caseloads as usual. And indeed, throughout the year the Court issued a significant number of interesting judgments and decisions.