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Europe’s top human rights court has ruled that a government’s failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions can be considered a violation of citizens’ rights, in a decision that will set a benchmark for future climate litigation.
The case brought against Switzerland by a 2,000-strong group of senior Swiss women, aged mainly in their 70s, was successful on the grounds that it failed to protect citizens from the “serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, wellbeing and quality of life” by not meeting its own climate targets.
The judges in Strasbourg at the same time dismissed a case brought by six Portuguese young people against 32 European governments, finding the group had not exhausted legal action through the national courts.
“That the court unequivocally affirmed that the climate crisis is a human rights crisis will have a huge significance,” said Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, who was present for the European Court of Human Rights rulings.
She said the court had also “made a strong pronouncement” on the science of climate change in a ruling that “will be influential all across Europe”.
The judgment marks the first time an international court has made a pronouncement on the legal obligations of governments in the face of the climate crisis.
It comes as the EU’s Earth observation agency confirmed that temperatures in March hit a record for the 10th month in a row. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said this marked a year of temperatures above the 1.5C threshold that governments agreed to try and limit global warming to under the 2015 Paris agreement, although the latter refers to a long-term rise over the period of more than a decade.
Gerry Liston, the lawyer for the Portuguese youths, said that despite the judges dismissing the younger generation’s case, the court’s ruling on the Swiss women’s action was “a massive win for all generations”.
“It means that all European countries must urgently revise their targets so that they are science-based and aligned to 1.5 degrees,” he said.
Catarina dos Santos Mota, a 23-year-old applicant in the Portuguese case, said the “judgment is a win for solidarity between young and old and recognises the existential threat of climate change”.
“We didn’t break the wall but we’ve made a huge crack. I want to see the win against Switzerland being used against all European countries and in national courts,” she said.
The Strasbourg courtroom was at capacity for the ruling with the youth climate campaigner Greta Thunberg also present.
The judges voted that the Swiss government had “critical gaps” in its domestic legislation on climate change including a failure to quantify “through a carbon budget or otherwise” national greenhouse gas emissions.
WWF Switzerland, a non-government organisation, said the judgment would set “a far-reaching precedent.”
“It couldn’t be more official: Switzerland must finally act,” it posted on social media platform X.
The Swiss government said it “takes note of the judgment” and would analyse it “with the authorities concerned and the measures which Switzerland has to take for the future will be examined”.
A third case brought to the court by Damien Carême, a former French mayor of the Grande-Synthe municipality, a low-lying north-eastern coastal area vulnerable to sea rise, was ruled inadmissible because Carême had later moved to Brussels and could not therefore “claim victim status” under the human rights convention, the court said.
Tom Cummins, partner at the law firm Ashurst, said companies and financial institutions should “review these cases carefully. Corporate climate litigation often relies on human rights arguments . . . The decision in the case against Switzerland will likely encourage claims of this nature.”
The International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights are all deliberating similar cases related to governments’ liability to protect citizens from climate change this year.
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