The applicants objected to the Federal Council, asking it to refuse to extend a licence to operate a power station. The council, from which there was no appeal, declined and extended the licence. The applicants invoked articles 6(1) and 13, arguing that they had not had access to a ‘tribunal’ and that the procedure followed by the council had not been fair. They said that there had been a violation of their civil right to the protection of their physical integrity under articles 2 and 8.
Held: Article 6(1) was not engaged. The court set out the test: ‘the outcome of the proceedings must be directly decisive for the right in question. As the court has consistently held, mere tenuous connections or remote consequences are not sufficient to bring article 6(1) into play’. When asked whether the link between the council’s decision and the applicants’ article 2 and 8 rights ‘was sufficiently close to bring article 6(1) into play, and was not too tenuous or remote’, the court answered that the applicants were unable to establish that the operation of the power station ‘exposed them personally to a danger that was not only serious but also specific and, above all, imminent’. Consequently ‘neither the dangers nor the remedies were established with a degree of probability that made the outcome of the proceedings directly decisive within the meaning of the court’s case law’. The connection between the council’s decision and the right invoked by the applicants was ‘too tenuous and remote’.
22110/93, [1997] ECHR 46
Worldlii, Bailii
European Convention on Human Rights 6
Human Rights
Cited by:
Cited – G, Regina (on The Application of) v X School SC 29-Jun-2011
The claimant was employed as a teaching assistant. He was suspended after allegations of sexual misbehaviour with boy at the school. He refused to take part in the disciplinary proceedings until the police investigation was concluded. A decision was . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 14 September 2021; Ref: scu.263133
