Key Judgments and Proceedings
Links are provided for relevant decisions in English.
- In the case of Jalloh v. Germany (Application no.
54810/00), the Grand Chamber of the Court declared that the
forcible administration of emetics to induce the regurgitation
of drugs for purposes of obtaining evidence, and the use in
criminal proceedings of evidence obtained in this manner, are
incompatible with the European Convention on Human
Rights.
- The case of Saramati v. France, Germany and Norway
(Application no. 78166/01) dealt with the issue of the
Convention’s applicability with respect to acts by the
NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) in Kosovo. The Grand Chamber of
the Court declared the application inadmissible, because the
act to which the Applicant objected (his arrest) was
attributable not to the accused countries but rather to KFOR,
which was acting on the basis of a resolution by the United
Nations Security Council. According to the Court, potential
violations of international human rights standards would
therefore have to be prosecuted within the framework of the
United Nations.
- The case of P. and others v. Germany (Application no.
25101/05) addressed the question of whether the exclusion
of individual claims of forced labourers under the law
governing the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and
Future” is compatible with the Convention. The Court
declared the Application inadmissible on the grounds that the
complaint was manifestly ill-founded and held that the
Foundation law had struck a fair balance between the competing
interests.
- In the case of J. v. Germany (Application no. 74613/01),
the Court ruled that assumption of German criminal courts that,
under section 6 (old version) of the German Criminal Code, they
had jurisdiction to convict the Applicant for committing murder
and genocide in the Doboj region of former Yugoslavia, was
compatible with international law, particularly the Genocide
Convention, and was therefore compatible with the Convention as
well. The Court therefore dismissed the application as
ill-founded.
- In the case Sürmeli v. Germany (Application no.
75529/01), the Grand Chamber of the Court held that the
possibilities currently available under German procedural law
for lodging a complaint regarding the excessive length of
proceedings do not constitute an effective remedy within the
meaning of the Convention. At the same time, the Court
expressly welcomed a bill drafted by the Federal Ministry of
Justice to introduce a remedy in the form of a complaint
alleging inaction.
- In a case involving the reassignment, without compensation,
of land parcels to the detriment of a certain group of heirs (the
so-called "new farmers"; Jahn and others v. Germany,
Application no. 72203/01), the Grand Chamber of the Court
dismissed the Application as ill-founded. According to the
Court, given the unique context of German unification, the
second Property Rights Amendment Act (which formed the basis of
the property reassignment) complied with the principle of
striking a fair balance between the protection of property and
the requirements of the general interest, despite the lack of a
regulation to provide compensation. This decision revised the
Chamber’s earlier decision to the contrary dated 22
January 2004.
- In proceedings involving the indemnification of former owners (v. Maltzan and others v.
Germany, Application no. 71916/01, the Court declared the
Application to be inadmissible. According to the Court, the
Federal Republic of Germany was responsible for the acts of
neither the Soviet occupying forces nor the German Democratic
Republic. Rather, when a state decides to redress the
consequences of acts it has not committed, it has a wide margin
of appreciation in implementing that policy. This judgment
thereby confirmed corresponding decisions by the Federal
Constitutional Court.
- The so-called "Caroline judgment" (v. H. v. Germany,
Application no. 59320/00), focused on the extent to which
it is permissible to publish images depicting the private life
of celebrities and thereby dealt with the relationship between
privacy rights on one hand and freedom of expression and
freedom of the press on the other. The Court ruled that the
Federal Constitutional Court judgment challenged by the
Applicant had infringed her right to privacy. In contrast to
the Federal Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human
Rights considers it inadmissible to give freedom of the press
primacy over the right to privacy if the media coverage in
question focuses on details of a person’s private life
that serve solely to provide entertainment and satisfy public
curiosity and that have no relation whatsoever to political or
public discourse. In Germany, the response to this judgment was
predominantly critical, particularly among representatives of
the media.
- In the case of Streletz, Kessler and Krenz v. Germany
(Application nos. 34044/96, 35532/97 and 44801/98), the
Applicants – who had served as high-level officials for
the former German Democratic Republic – challenged their
criminal convictions for the deaths of unarmed persons seeking
to flee across the border between the two German states. The
court ruled unanimously that no violation of the prohibition
against retroactive punishment, as set forth in the European
Convention on Human Rights, had occurred.
- The proceedings that became known as the "Horno" case (N. and others v. Germany,
Application no. 46346/99) dealt with the issue of whether
the approval of lignite-mining operations on the territory of
the municipality of Horno, as well as the forcible transfer of
ethnic Sorbs that such operations would entail, violated the
European Convention on Human Rights. In this case as well, the
Court found that no violation of the Convention had
occurred.
- The Court also dismissed as ill-founded the complaint lodged
in the case of Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein v. Germany
(Application no. 42527/98). This case dealt with the
restitution of a painting that had been expropriated by the
government of Czechoslovakia in 1946 and that resurfaced in a
Cologne art gallery.
- The case Bankovic and others v. Germany and the other European NATO member states (Application no. 52207/99) involved the destruction of the Belgrade headquarters of Radio-Television Serbia by NATO during the Kosovo war. The Applicants were primarily close relatives of the victims. In this case, the Court had to decide whether the victims were subject to the jurisdiction of European NATO member states and to the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court found that, under the Convention, the impugned decision to destroy the headquarters did impute responsibility to the European member states of NATO.
