The right to respect of private life and the protection of the environment
Premessa: tale scritto, a cura di Elena Graziuso, fa parte del Legal Research Group di ELSA Napoli intitolato “Right to private life: challenges and perspectives” organizzato da ELSA Napoli e curato da Francesco De Santis (professore di diritto processuale civile e procedure di tutela internazionale dei diritti umani presso il Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza dell’Università di Napoli “Federico II”).
Summary: 1. Introduction – 2. Absence of a specific Environmental Right and Provisions of the Convention and its Protocols affected by environmental factors – 3. Recognition of a human right to an healthy environment through the interpretation of Article 8 ECHR by the ECtHR – 3.1 Nature and scope of Art. 8 ECHR – 3.2 The concept of State’s positive obligations and procedural environmental rights – 4. The “Cordella and Others v. Italy” Judgement: between progress and unresolved issues – 4.1 The choice between Art. 2 and Art. 8 ECHR – 4.2 The position of the Parties and the assessment of the Court on the admissibility criteria – 4.3 The outcome of the judgment – 5. Conclusion
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Introduction
The protection of the environment has become an important issue which involves different aspects of human life that need to be protected and balanced.
This paper emphasizes the human rights dimension of environmental protection and gives an overview of the approach of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in this field.
It should be borne in mind that the increasing attention to human rights in different fields is based on the right to development introduced in 1986 by the UN, which is defined as “right to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.” [1]
Due to the increasing attention to environmental matters, in 1987 the Brundtland report enriched this definition, firstly introducing the notion of «sustainable development»[2] that, according to the International Court of Justice, expresses the need “to reconcile economic development with protection of the environment”[3].
This new understanding of the concept of development can thus be considered as the first step towards a new era of policies at all institutional levels.
Initially characterized by its economic objective, the EU legal order was built around a series of freedoms that may conflict with some fundamental rights.
Driven by the intention to portray a less mercantile image of the EU, as well as by the intention to align with policies at the international level, a EU environmental policy has gradually emerged and has progressively grown from a range of action programs to a vast body of regulatory measures through which much has been achieved over the last years.
Among others, one should mention the recent adoption of the “EU Green Deal”[4] by the EU Commission, through which the EU has raised its environmental and climate ambitions to face the climate crisis.
Nevertheless, ensuring the respect of the targets set out in the agreements remains a very difficult task. This hurdle, consequently, affect the ability to guarantee the protection of the human rights that could be involved.
These obstacles show that facing environmental issues increasingly requires the adoption of appropriate measures, not only to preserve our future and guarantee a better quality of life, but also to provide an effective remedy in case of damage.
This debate, therefore, involves the ECtHR, whose task is to ensure that there is no violation of the rights expressed in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
To this end, section 2 addresses the issue of whether the ECtHR is the most appropriate venue where to decide upon cases involving both environmental and human rights harm, even in the absence of a specific right to a healthy environment among the ECHR provisions.
Subsequently, section 3 deals with Art. 8 ECHR and its evolutionary interpretation as the main tool employed by the ECtHR to indirectly protect the environment.
To highlight the progress made by the ECtHR and the aspects that have been left with much room for improvement, section 4 focuses on the Judgment “Cordella and Others v. Italy”[5] concerning the Ilva case.
Lastly, section 5 outlines some concluding remarks stressing the fact that even if the application of Art. 8 ECHR boosted the development of the recent jurisprudence, it has not always proved to be the most appropriate instrument to ensure an effective remedy due to the structural characteristics of the ECtHR system.
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Absence of a specific environmental right and the provisions of the Convention and its Protocols affected by environmental factors
The European Convention of Human Rights, adopted in 1950, was drafted before full awareness of environmental issues arose.
Therefore, despite the several references in sources of public international law, there is not an explicit environmental right under the Convention.
Since individuals are not in the position to invoke the provisions of EU Treaty law dedicated to the protection of the environment[6] for questions concerning their human rights, the question arises as to whether individuals could rely on the implicit environmental duties embodied in the ECHR.
In fact, even if the violation of the right to a healthy environment is not directly recognized by the ECHR, hazardous activities and adverse environmental factors can be the cause of violation of other rights thereby expressly guaranteed.
Thus, the ECtHR, through its interpretation of the ECHR, has gradually recognised the existence of the so-called third generation rights (including the right to an healthy environment) – and their connection with the rights and provisions explicitly included in the Convention – specifically, the right to life (Article 2), the right to a fair trial and to have access to a court (Article 6), the right to respect of private and family life (Article 8), the right to receive and impart information and ideas (Article 10), the right to an effective remedy (Article 13) and the right to the peaceful enjoyment of one’s possessions (Article 1 of Protocol No. 1).
Indeed, the ECtHR has increasingly examined complaints in which individuals have argued that a breach of one of their Convention rights has resulted from adverse environmental factors[7].
Adverse environmental factors can negatively affect individual rights in different ways, giving rise to different obligations on public authorities to avoid a breach of the right concerned.
The most visible way is a direct harm to a human right, which has a negative impact on the health of individuals and obliges public authorities to take measures to ensure that human rights are not seriously affected by these factors.
The second one is an indirect harm, which either gives rise to certain procedural rights for the individual concerned, or constitutes a legitimate aim justifying interference with certain individual human rights expressly guaranteed.
In other words“the Court has established that public authorities must observe certain requirements as regards information and communication, as well as participation in decision-making processes and access to justice in environmental cases”[8]
Hence, for example, “the right to peaceful enjoyment of one’s possessions may be restricted if this is considered necessary for the protection of the environment”.[9]
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Recognition of a human right to an healthy environment through the ECtHR interpretation of Article 8 ECHR
Due to the absence of directly applicable rules concerning environmental protection, the ECtHR has tried to indirectly guarantee a minimum level of environmental protection. The ECtHR’s jurisprudence, has recognized a significant degree of protection for the individual victims of pollution phenomena and environmental degradation, thanks to an evolutionary and dynamic interpretation of Art. 8 of the ECHR.
In fact, throughout the past years, the Court has held that “severe environmental pollution may affect individuals’ well-being and prevent them from enjoying their homes in such a way as to affect their private and family life adversely”. [10]
3.1 Nature and scope of Art. 8 ECHR
First of all, the ECtHR based its interpretation on the specific nature of Art. 8 ECHR.
In order to invoke this provision, an applicant must show that his or her complaint falls within at least one of the four interests identified in the Article, namely: private life, family life, home and correspondence.
Subsequently, the Court determines whether the applicant’s claim falls within the scope of Art. 8 ECHR. The Court has defined this scope broadly, even when a specific right is not set out in the Article, relying on the fact that the concept of private life is a term not susceptible to exhaustive definition.[11]
This feature allows extending the application field of the article by using the “protection par ricochet” technique, which allows for an enlargement of the Convention rights based on the idea that, if the ECtHR cannot expressly add a new right to the Convention catalogue, its jurisprudence can enrich its content.
In particular, this technique makes it possible to circumvent the ratione materiae incompatibility of a request with the conventional instrument, filling the text gaps by adding rights that we can qualify as “derived”.
Given that private life encompasses a very wide range of issues, cases falling under this notion have been grouped into three (sometimes overlapping) broad categories, namely: (1) a person’s physical, psychological or moral integrity, (2) his privacy and (3) his identity and autonomy.
As far as environmental issues are concerned, both the private life sphere (in the meaning of “person’s physical, psychological or moral integrity”) and the protection of the domicile (in the meaning of his “privacy”) are likely to be affected by the environmental impairments.
3.2 The concept of State’s positive obligations and procedural environmental rights
One of the ways to ensure the effective enjoyment of the right to private and family life related to the environment is by choosing an appropriate legal basis that justifies the inclusion of the relevant right under the scope of Art 8 ECHR.
In accordance with the main purpose of Art. 8 of the Convention, this provision imposes a negative obligation on the States, namely to not interfere with the rights thereby guaranteed. This implies, that the State must not perform conducts which harm the environment.
The ECtHR experienced difficulties faced in establishing a violation in the field of environmental protection, therefore, in ensuring a protection that is not theoretical or illusory, but concrete and effective.
Consequently, the ECtHR did not hesitate to affirm the existence of positive obligations upon the States parties of the ECHR, which add up to the negative ones. Ultimately, positive obligations become the legal basis to interpret the right to private and family life as containing certain procedural elements.
Bearing in mind that “substantive” and “procedural” are both categories of positive obligations, the criterion underlying the distinction appears to lie in the content of the action expected from the State: substantive obligations are therefore those which requires to adopt the basic measures[12] needed for the full enjoyment of the rights guaranteed; on the other side, procedural obligations demand to maintain or establish domestic procedures to ensure better protection of persons, which ultimately require the provision of sufficient remedies in case of violation of rights.
This difference is important because it allowed the ECtHR to extend the concept of positive obligations contained in Art. 8 ECHR including some procedural duties incumbent upon the State, such as the duty to conduct appropriate investigations and studies, the duty to use the precautionary principle providing relevant information, the duty to provide for participation in environmental decision-making.[13]
For instance, while in Guerra and Others v. Italy the Grand Chamber of the Court found Article 10 of the ECHR on the right to information to be inapplicable, as it did not require States to give information about public decision voluntarily, in Di Sarno and Others v. Italy the ECtHR discussed the procedural obligation to receive information on environmental projects as part of the positive obligation envisaged in Art. 8 of the ECHR.[14]
In this way, the ECtHR considers that States Parties are called not only to refrain from conducts but also to play an active role in putting in place all the necessary measures to establish adequate domestic legislation and provide effective protection tools.
Precisely, the ECtHR considered that in addition to the primarily negative undertaking, “there may be positive obligations inherent in effective respect for private or family life”, and it determined that the inaction through which the State failed to protect the right to private and family life was a failure to provide the applicants “with essential information that would have enabled them to assess the risks they and their family might run.”[15]
As a matter of fact, these duties are the so called “procedural triad of the environmental right” set out in the Aarhus Convention that, as other environmental legal instruments, the ECtHR took into account to develop and provide a normative backbone to its interpretation.
Therefore, the procedural aspect of Art. 8 ECHR, refers to the creation of a category of procedural environmental rights, that includes all those obligations to which it is easier to refer in case of violation.[16]
The above analysis provides the background against which the right of individuals alleging violation of their (primary) rights related to environmental harm must be seen.
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The “Cordella and Others v. Italy” judgment: between progress and unresolved issues
In the Cordella and Others v. Italy case, the applicants complained a violation of their rights to life, to the respect of private and family life, and to an effective remedy (Articles 2, 8 and 13 of the Convention) due to the effects of the emissions from the Ilva S.p.a., an industry specialized in the production and processing of steel which is based in Taranto.
The ECtHR and the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) had already pronounced on the impact of the Ilva plant’s emissions.
In particular, following an action for failure to fulfill obligations under Article 258 TFEU, which was brought on 29 June 2010, the ECJ held Italy responsible for not having adopted the necessary measures to ensure that the competent authorities could monitor properly that existing installations operate in accordance with the requirements of the Directive 2008/1/CE.[17]
Under Art. 2 and 8 of the Convention, the applicants complained that the Italian Government have failed to adopt the legal and regulatory measures to protect their health and the environment, jointly to the fact that these have failed to provide information related to the risk caused by pollution[18].
The ECtHR considered appropriate to examine the applicants’ complaints solely from the point of view of Art. 8 ECHR[19], which is a clear sign of the Court’s tendency that will be examined in the following paragraphs.
4.1 The choice between Art. 2 and Art. 8 ECHR
The relevance of the choice of the legal basis is evident and is highlighted by the different outcome should the ECtHR have chosen Art. 2 ECHR rather than Art. 8 ECHR as a legal basis.
Art. 2 ECHR covers cases in which the victim died[20] and those in which his life has been exposed to serious danger, while Art. 8 ECHR covers the offenses to the psycho-physical integrity that do not reach a severity threshold so high to fall under Art. 2 ECHR. Therefore, the relation between these provisions can be described in terms of subsidiarity to the type of the offense.
The scope of Art. 2 ECHR refers to a defined legal interest, the life of individuals, which could be threatened or harmed by the risk factor.
On the other hand, the scope of Art. 8 ECHR is less clear and strict, as it relates to well-being or quality of life, concepts that the ECtHR evaluates on a case by case basis.
In both cases, the ECtHR examines whether there has been an interference with that right or whether the State’s positive obligations to protect the right have been engaged, but different consequences derive from applying one or the other Article.
One of these concerns the conditions which the State must fulfill for its actions to be lawful, and precisely the limits within which the State can carry out dangerous activities or authorize their performance by private parties.
The Convention affords absolute protection to human life while, Art. 8 ECHR par. 2, sets out the conditions upon which a State may interfere with the enjoyment of the right to private and family life, namely, the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, the prevention of disorder or crime, the protection of health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
The Convention allows limitations if these are “in accordance with the law” or “prescribed by law” and are “necessary in a democratic society”[21] for the protection of one of the objectives set out above.
When the ECtHR assess the necessity of the interference, it often needs to balance the applicant’s interests protected under Art. 8 ECHR, and a third party’s interests, protected by other provisions of the Convention and its Protocols. The balancing test constitutes the decisive juridical operation to ascertain the existence of a violation or not.
In environmental cases, the rationale limitation clause is to achieve a balance between environmental protection needs and economic development.
If two or more interests are in conflict, it is up to the national authorities to try to reconcile them as far as possible. This attempt takes place previous to the assessment of the ECtHR and is possible thanks to the margin of appreciation recognized to the States Parties of the ECHR. Such discretion stems from the subsidiarity principle and the ECtHR takes it into account when it performs the proportionality check.
In particular, the ECtHR judges recognize a wide margin of appreciation on the measures to be taken for the protection of the environment, so that the role of the Court is “to assess whether the State could reasonably be expected to act so as prevent or put an end” [22] to the violation.
As a consequence, the notion of “reasonableness” of the tolerance often weakens the need for a “fair balance” between the different interests.
4.2 The position of the Parties and the assessment of the Court on the admissibility criteria
Before assessing the merit of the case, the ECtHR must check that the admissibility criteria under Artt. 34 and 35 of the Convention are fulfilled.
The following sections will present the main issues related to the admissibility criteria of this judgment to show their relevance in the evolution of the ECtHR environmental-related jurisprudence.
Despite the flexibility of the notion of private life, there are some limits in the application of Art. 8 ECHR, and of the ECHR as a whole, to cases concerning the environment, as the ECtHR will not deal with the environment in general but with serious harm that affect individuals.[23]
The ECtHR environmental jurisprudence reflects the individualistic logic underpinning the ECHR system, which can be identified by key notions such as victim requirement, the ban of an actio popularis and the restricted standing of NGOs concerning issues of general interests.[24]
These notions may represent obstacles to vindicate the collective interests underlying environmental damage.
It must be considered that ecological anthropocentrism is the ideological starting point, meaning that the ECtHR’s environmental jurisprudence is characterized by a notion of environment focused on the human being.
The drafter of the ECHR and the ECtHR have not intended Art. 8 ECHR to afford a direct protection of the natural environment, which is only indirectly protected through the damage suffered by humans.
In fact, in accordance with Art 35 lett. b ECHR, an application before the ECtHR may be submitted only when the intimate sphere of a person is directly and seriously affected.
Concerning the victim status requirement, the Italian Government has disputed that the applicants satisfied such admissibility criterion, claiming that the applicants’ complaints were generic and did not refer to a particular situation, alongside not providing any factual evidence to support the argument that the interested parties had suffered a damage[25].
The ECtHR confirmed its jurisprudence about the inadmissibility of an actio popularis but at the same time rejects the argument of the Italian Government, stating that it emergeed that pollution had inevitably made people more vulnerable to different kinds of diseases so without doubt has had a negative impact on the applicants’ well-being.[26]
The ECtHR also rejected the Government’s argument about the possibility for the applicants to use domestic remedies.
The ECtHR recalled that the applicants complained, on one hand, the failure by the State to adopt administrative and legislative measures to protect their health and environment and, on the other, the application of specific measures that allowed the Ilva S.p.a. to continue its activity. Consequently, the ECtHR considered that no criminal, civil or administrative proceedings can answer to the case at hand.[27]
Moreover, it stressed that the aforementioned measures[28] introduced criminal and administrative immunities to the benefit of both the external commissioners who were in charge of the extraordinary administration of Ilva S.p.a. and the future owner of the society. Such immunities did not allow the applicants to lodge any criminal or administrative complaint.
Concerning the six-month time limit to lodge the application, the ECtHR pointed out the permanent nature of the violation and reminded that, in such a situation, the six-month term begins to run from the moment in which the situation ends.[29]
Lastly, the ECtHR rejected the Government’s complain about the inadmissibility of the application for the absence of a significant disadvantage under Art. 35, par. 3, lett. b of the Convention by taking into account the existence of scientific reports.[30]
4.3 The outcome of the Judgment
A violation of the right to private and family life requires that the harm or the interference exceeds a minimum threshold of gravity which considerably reduces the applicant’s ability to enjoy his home or his private or family life.
In the assessment of whether the threshold has been exceeded, the ECtHR evaluates all the elements of the case, in particular, the intensity and the duration of the harm jointly to the physical or psychological consequences on the health or quality of life of the applicant.[31]
In any case, a direct and sufficient link between the impugned situation and the applicants’ home or private or family life must exist. One should distinguish two situations. The first one concerns the cases where the ECtHR considers necessary to establish the link between the State and the harmful activity in question as an essential precondition for holding the State responsible for the violation of Art. 8 ECHR. The second one falls within the “horizontal effect” doctrine, according to which States’ positive obligations concerning dangerous activities implies the involvement of the State when the threat comes from private individuals or other activities not directly related to the State, provided that the latter failed to properly regulate their activities.
In light of the aforementioned, the ECtHR found a violation of Article 8 and Article 13 of the Convention.
Notwithstanding this conclusion, the judgment presents some shortcomings. Pollution is considered an element of potential danger to human health, a presumptive index of greater vulnerability to diseases, insusceptible of verification in certain cases since further elements of risk can influence individual conditions, such as eating habits, lifestyle, genetic factors, age, profession.
Therefore, the ECtHR only concluded that Italy was responsible for the lack of adequate public policies to face the exposure of its citizens to a potential health risk. The ECtHR did not held Italy responsible for the specific individual consequences of that potential risk.[32]
This is confirmed by the fact that even if the applicants claimed fair satisfaction under Art. 41 ECHR, the ECtHR did not award any compensation to them, as it considered that the ascertainment of the violation constituted fair compensation for the moral damage suffered[33].
This decision is consistent with the ECtHR’s previous approach concerning environmental protection under Art. 8 ECHR.
Moreover, the ECtHR rejected the applicants’ request to apply Art. 46 ECHR in order to have a pilot judgment even if the absence of effective domestic remedies constitutes a systemic problem already detected in other occasions by the very same Court – such as in the Di Sarno and Others v. Italy case.
5. Conclusion
There is no doubt that this judgment has the merit to have placed the spotlight on the States’ responsibilities, which, in this case, had introduced a regulation inspired by an unreasonable costs-benefits evaluation and did not implement the urban rehabilitation plan to stop the harm.
Furthermore, the efforts of the ECtHR in recognizing the evidence value offered by epidemiological studies are important, as well as its reliance on the positive obligations imposed on the States Parties and the development of a broader concept of the potential victim.
Indeed, as shown by the recent case Duarte Agostinho et autres c. Portugal et 32 Autres États[34], the ECtHR has started to accept applications lodged by individuals who belong to a group of people who risk being directly affected by the absence of an enforcement measure of general interest i.e. the damages suffered by the failure by different Member States to meet the commitments agreed in the Paris Agreement.
Despite these important achievements, a level of protection that could be effective and homogeneous has not yet been reached.
In the current scenario, the ECtHR can use a range of regimes to found its reasoning. This leads, sometimes, to a wider discretion in choosing the regime to apply to the case at hand and, consequently, in defining its social impact.
This is confirmed by the reference to the Aarhus Convention as part of the legal framework recalled by the ECtHR, as well as in the choice to apply Art. 8 ECHR instead than Art. 2 ECHR.
The different content of the two provisions is undermined in cases like this, in which the scientific evidence shows widespread risks to people’s health and life, even in absence of an individually established causal link.
The relevance of the epidemiological studies as scientific evidence supports the argument in favor of the possibility to analyse the Ilva case under the lens of Art. 2 ECHR.
Over the past years, such evidence highlighted the increase in mortality and the risk of developing lethal pathologies (especially oncological ones) among the habitants of Taranto and the surrounding area.
In light of this proven risk, the choice of the EctHR appears disappointing because, even if the existence of serious damages to health is not a constitutive element of the significant danger under Art. 2 ECHR, there is a difference between epidemiological studies and statistical studies in the evidence content.
Epidemiology uses statistical data as a starting point to formulate a causal hypothesis that must subsequently be verified by scientific and logical criteria.
Whenever this assessment gives positive results, and hence demonstrates that causal link between a certain exposure and the increased risk of mortality, scientific data will be available (so-called relative risk) and the outcome of the assessment could be extended to the entire population exposed.
Thus, when the object of the risk is a lethal pathology, there should be no obstacle in the application of Art. 2 ECHR.
This choice would have had some practical consequences and the judgment would have had a more effective impact.
First of all, the conduct carried out by the Italian Government would have been deemed a fortiori detrimental to the right to life, due to the failure to put in place countermeasures to face the risk of death, as ascertained by epidemiological evidence.
In terms of general measures to enforce the judgment, Italy would not have been called to issue a regime for a fair balance between interests but national authorities would have been required to put in place all the measures to reduce the life risks close to zero with a limited margin of appreciation.
Moreover, the ECtHR could have affirmed the existence of the obligation to prosecute the conduct characterized by serious and conscious guilt, addressing the legitimacy of the exclusion of punishment provided by “Salva-Ilva regulation”[35] under the Convention provisions.
Lastly, although more difficult, the outcome of the procedure would probably have been different regarding Art. 41 ECHR as well, since the Court could have awarded compensation for the non-pecuniary damage suffered by the individual applicants.
The problem is not necessarily linked to the present case but, more broadly, to the extent to which environmental issues may be addressed under the ECHR system in general.
The transversal nature of the subject and its complexity cannot be reduced and constrained to the choice between the absoluteness or flexibility of two provisions that may lead to completely different consequences – in the specific case, on one hand, the stop of the production and, on the other, the debasement of a major health problem leaving to the State any evaluation about the redefinition balance between conflicting interests’.
Due to this complex decision-making process, the introduction of an autonomous right to a healthy environment is desiderable or, at the very least, a more appropriate venues to address environmental disputes should be set up.
EU legislature should deal with the issue of the protection of individuals by sufficiently clear and precise provisions which may be directly applicable. Some requirements emerged from the ECtHR jurisprudence should be transposed into positive law, giving rise to a right with autonomous contours to which individuals may refer to contend their own expectations concerning environmental safety, without precluding to the States the exercise of a certain margin of appreciation in performing cost-benefit evaluations.
[1] Cfr. Art 1 , A/RES/41/128
[2] Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, 1987, Par. 30
[3] International Court of Justice Reports, 1997, Case concerning the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project , pp.77-78, par. 140
[4] “The European Green Deal.” COM(2019) 640 final, Brussels, 11 December 2019
[5] European Court of Human Rights, App. n. 54414/13 and 54264/15, 24 January 2019
[6]Article 37 EUCHR, Article 3(3) TEU and Articles 11, 114(3), 191 to 193 of the TFEU are devoted to the environmental issues.
[7] Adverse environmental factors are any factors that influence living organisms (toxic exhalations, temperature increase, etc)
[8]Council of Europe Publishing, “Manual on Human Rights and the Environment”, 2012, available here: https://www.echr.coe.int/librarydocs/dh_dev_manual_environment_eng.pdf
[9] Ibid.
[10] European Court of Human Rights, App. no. 16708/90, 23 November 1994, par. 51
[11] See European Court of Human Rights, App. n. 13710/88, 16 December 1992, par. 29; European Court of Human Rights, App. n. 2346/02, 29 April 2002, par. 61; European Court of Human Rights, App. n. 44647/98, 28 January 2003, par. 57
[12]These measures include the provision of appropriate legislation that ensure the right to a healthy environment
[13]References will follow in this paragraph
[14]European Court of Human Rights, App. n.30765/08, 10 January 2012, par 107
[15]European Court of Human Rights, App. no. 14967/89, 19 February 1998, par. 60
[16]Applicants need to establish the violation of a “primary right” enshrined in the ECHR to be able to claim that a member state has violated a procedural environmental obligation (in this case, the primary right is set forth in Art 8)
[17] Directive of the European Parliament and the Council, 2008/1/CE, 15 January 2008
[18] European Court of Human Rights, requêtes n. 54414/13 et 54264/15, 24 Janvier 2019, par. 93
[19] Ibid. par. 94
[20] In this case, the existence of the causal link must be ascertained
[21] Art. 8 (2) European Convention of Human Rights
[22] European Court of Human Rights, App. No. 55723/00, 9 June 2005, par. 89
[23] “There is no explicit right in the Convention to a clean and quiet environment, but where an individual is indirectly and seriously affected by noise or other pollution, an issue may be arise under article 8” European Court of Human Rights, App. No. 36022/97, 8 July 2003, par. 96
[24] Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria, Council of Europe and European Court of Human Rights, updated August 2021, available here: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/admissibility_guide_eng.pdf
[25] European Court of Human Rights, requêtes n. 54414/13 et 54264/15, 24 Janvier 2019, par. 96-97
[26]Ibid., par. 105-107
[27]Ibid. par 123-127
[28]Salva-Ilva Acts of 2015 and 2016
[29]European Court of Human Rights, requêtes n. 54414/13 et 54264/15, 24 Janvier 2019, par. 131
[30]Ibid. par 138-139
[31]Ibid. par 157
[32] T. GUARNIER, “Ancora dissonanze fra Corte Costituzionale e Corte di Strasburgo : astrattezza vs. concretezza nel sindacato sulle politiche pubbliche nel caso ILVA”. Quaderni costituzionali, (2019) fascicolo 2:473-475
[33]European Court of Human Rights, requêtes n. 54414/13 et 54264/15, 24 Janvier 2019, par. 187
[34]European Court of Human Rights Communicated Case 13 November 2020, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and other 32 States
[35]Art. 2 comma 2, d.l. n. 1 of 2015 provides an exemption in advantage to the extraordinary administrator, the purchaser and the delegates for the conducts held during the rehabilitation plan.
