Monday 26 January 2009

Speech of Court's President on Social Rights

Last week, the Court's president Jean-Paul Costa spoke at the invitation of the Brussels Bar on social rights and the ECHR. Amongst others, he pointed out that the Court is increasingly showing, in its judgments, its awareness of the importance of the European Social Charter - which one could call the socio-economic twin of the ECHR, although the supervisory system is quite different. As Costa succinctly puts it in his speech, the Court is not an isolated planet in the centre of the European human rights system, since the law of gravity also applies to it. Let's see how strong the gravity will be in the coming years! The speech, in French, can be found here.