The Swiss Parliament has rejected a ‘landmark’ climate ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that claimed the country’s climate policies breached its citizens’ rights by being insufficiently severe. The Guardian has the story.
A panel of Strasbourg judges ruled in April that Switzerland had violated the human rights of older women through weak climate policies that leave them more vulnerable to heatwaves. Activists hailed the judgment as a breakthrough because it leaves all members of the Council of Europe exposed to legal challenges for sluggish efforts to clean up carbon-intensive economies.
But the Swiss Parliament’s lower house voted on Wednesday to disregard the ruling – with 111 votes in favour and 72 against – arguing that the judges had overstepped their bounds and that Switzerland had done enough. The declaration, which has been adopted by the upper house but does not bind the federal Government, accused the court of “inadmissible and disproportionate judicial activism”.
“This is terrible from a rule-of-law perspective,” said Corina Heri, a law researcher at the University of Zürich, adding that “the whole system would fall apart” if lots of states started to pick and choose which rulings they complied with. “The term ‘slippery slope’ is overused, obviously, but it is a dangerous precedent to create.”
The KlimaSeniorinnen – or Swiss female climate elders – are a group of 2,400 women over the age of 65 who took the Swiss Government to court for failing to do its fair share to stop the planet heating [sic] 1.5°C (2.7°F). After years of setbacks in regional and national courts, they escalated the case to Europe’s top human rights court and scored a partial victory.
But in a fiery debate on Wednesday, Swiss politicians attacked the court and mocked the women.
Jean-Luc Addor, from the Right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party, the largest in the federal assembly, said: “These ‘climate elder’ are just a bunch of apparently healthy ‘boomeuses’ [female boomers], who are trying to deny our children the living conditions they have enjoyed all their lives.”
You see, Tories. You can just ignore the European court and the sky doesn’t fall in. After all, it’s often just a bunch of souped-up Leftist activists with law degrees.
Worth reading in full.
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