Europe

The Aarhus Regulation is to be revised in order to bring it fully in line with the Aarhus Convention, including extending the provisions beyond NGOs. The Council of Europe Presidency and European Parliament negotiators reached a provisional political agreement on a proposal to revise the Aarhus

A draft law has been approved by the Spanish government that would let children as young as 14 change their legal gender with no medical diagnosis. The bill has been prepared by the country's equality ministry, led by the left-wing Podemos party, and would permit people 16 and over to change their n

Poland could face EU infringement proceedings over its repeated attempts to bring disciplinary proceedings against the lawyer of Donald Tusk, a prominent opponent of the Polish government, an Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has suggested. Advocate General Michal

There are circumstances in which data protection watchdogs in the EU can bring a company to court over GDPR breaches despite not being the lead supervisory authority under the 'one-stop shop' rule, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled. The complex judgment, handed down by the

Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladić has lost his final appeal against his convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. Mladić was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2017 of crimes committed by Serb f

New EU rules requiring online platforms to remove "terrorist content" within an hour of receiving a removal order from state authorities have come into force. The Terrorist Content Online Regulation, which applies as of 7 June 2022, aims to "counter the spread of extremist ideologies online" by intr

Slovenia has become the 13th country in Europe to pass legislation defining rape as sex without consent. The new amendment to the Slovenian criminal code, debated for nearly three years, removes the requirement for evidence of use of force or the threat of use of force and violence to classify an ac

Supermarkets in the UK have suffered another blow in the battle for equal pay after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled employees working in stores can compare their roles to colleagues working in distribution centres for the purpose of equal pay. Before the UK left the EU, the C

Danish MPs have defied international condemnation to approve legislation providing for asylum seekers to be transferred to detention centres outside of Europe for processing. The bill, approved in a 70-24 vote yesterday, will amend the Aliens Act to allow Denmark to move refugees to asylum centres i

Sex workers in Spain have the right to form their own union, the country's Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The OTRAS union was established in August 2018 but closed its doors three months later following an order of the National Court.

A rape complainant in Italy suffered a violation of her ECHR rights after she was re-victimised in court. In its judgment in the case of J.L. v. Italy, the European Court of Human Rights held, by six votes to one, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life and pe

The International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) has condemned the Belarusian authorities' forced diversion of a flight carrying dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich as a "reckless and abhorrent act of state terrorism". Mr Pratasevich was arrested after his Ryanair flight from G

An oil giant has been ordered to cut its global carbon emissions in a landmark ruling involving 17,000 co-plaintiffs. Royal Dutch Shell was ordered by a court in The Hague to lower its emissions by 45 per cent by the end of 2030 as compared with 2019 levels in a case brought by Friends of the Earth.

The UK's bulk surveillance regime prior to 2016 was unlawful, but bulk surveillance in itself is not inherently unlawful, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled. The Grand Chamber today handed down its judgment in Big Brother Watch and Others v the United Kingdom, a landmark case broug

Irregularities in the appointment of judges to Poland's top court precluded an applicant company's right to a "tribunal established in law", the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled. In a unanimous judgment handed down last week, the ECtHR noted that three judges of the Constitutional Co