How far can the European Court of Human Rights go in the fight against discrimination? Defining new standards in its nondiscrimination jurisprudence

Abstract

European judges in Strasbourg have recently been called on to decide on some important issues concerning discriminatory treatment in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its protocols. Moving from different grounds of discrimination, it is possible to find a common leitmotif in the judgments delivered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR): the main idea is that the attempts to limit discrimination in the member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) are even more pronounced nowadays. Roma, women, religious minorities, and homosexual couples have thus found a reinforced protection in Strasbourg which is not restrained either by contrary decisions delivered by national constitutional courts or embedded in the legal tradition of the states involved. As far as the contracting states are concerned, the main consequence is the narrower margin of appreciation recognized by the Court even in particularly sensitive matters of national public opinion. New standards have thus been reached and very weighty reasons are increasingly required to ascertain the compatibility between the Convention and different treatment based exclusively on the grounds of ethnic origin, gender, religion, or sexual orientation and reserved to vulnerable groups.