The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.
Article 14, European Convention on Human Rights
In order to identify how equality bodies could best contribute to developing European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence, the Equinet Equality Law Working Group monitored Article 14 cases to identify those that are directly relevant to equality and non-discrimination and the work of equality bodies. The Group sought communicated cases relating to equality and non-discrimination to consider opportunities to contribute by way of a potential third-party intervention (TPI) to the ECtHR. To this end, the Working Group has produced a Compendium of two years of Article 14 cases from 1st March 2017 until 28th February 2019 from the ECtHR.
In order to support this work, the Group has monitored relevant Article 14 judgments from the ECtHR. The publication therefore considers the sorts of discrimination issues which have recently been considered by the ECtHR; the approach it takes to Article 14 cases; and the intricacies of the legal tests it applies.
The Compendium provides definitions of discrimination and discusses the differences in treatment. It looks at the scope and suspected grounds, along with several other characteristics in the identified Article 14 cases. It also touches upon the gender perspective in some cases of discrimination and discusses the influence of international law, before drawing conclusions and general observations.
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Further Reading
In 2020, the Equality Law Working Group finally found a suitable case. In July, Equinet submitted a third-party intervention before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of Franc TOPLAK v. Slovenia and Iztok MRAK v. Slovenia, now pending before the second section of the ECtHR.
Pursuant to Article 36(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and Rule 44(3) of the Rules of the Court, Equinet has submitted its first written observations to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in applications nos. 34591/19 and 42545/19 Franc TOPLAK v. Slovenia and Iztok MRAK v. Slovenia. The cases concern the accessibility of polling stations to persons with disabilities in wheelchairs.