The European Court rules on the first three climate cases: some observations on the question of causality

Abstract

On 9 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on the first three climate cases: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho and others v. Portugal and 32 others, and Carême v. France. While the Duarte and Carême cases were declared inadmissible, in the KlimaSeniorinnen case the Court adopted a remarkable judgment in which it recognized for the first time that the ECHR implies positive obligations for States to adopt, and effectively apply in practice, regulations and measures capable of mitigating the present and future, potentially irreversible, effects of climate change. The Strasbourg Court thus set out a number of general principles on human rights violations linked to climate change, which were explicitly taken up in the other two cases. In addition, for the first time, the Court explicitly addresses, and seeks to systematize, a crucial issue raised in almost all climate-related litigation: the question of causation. In this contribution, after briefly outlining the decisions taken by the Court in the three abovementioned cases, the author aims to analyze in particular the position explicitly expressed by the Court on this issue