The elderly Swiss environmentalists outside the ECHR – Reuters
The lawsuit brought by more than 2 thousand elderly Swiss women passes. However, the appeal of the young Portuguese and the former French mayor is inadmissible. This is the result of the awaited ruling, which had already been defined as historic, on the climate. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) was today called upon to issue its verdict on three appeals. Strasbourg agrees with the Swiss association Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland (Elders for the Climate Switzerland), supported by Greenpeace Switzerland, who asked the Court to force Switzerland to intervene to protect their human rights, and to adopt the legislative and administrative measures necessary to help avoid an increase in the average global temperature of above 1.5°C, applying concrete objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The ECtHR ruled that Bern’s failure to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets violated some of their human rights. A verdict that could force the Swiss government to take more incisive action. It is a historic achievement, with possible knock-on effects across Europe.
Disappointment instead for the result of the appeal presented by the six Portuguese boys against 32 member states of the European Union – the 27 of the EU plus Norway, Switzerland, Russia, Great Britain and Turkey -, accused of not doing enough to reduce emissions . The young people were between 10 and 23 years old in June 2017, when they started the case after a fire devastated the Pedrógrão Grande forest, killing 64 people. The six millennial lawsuit was the largest climate lawsuit ever filed. According to young people, states have not kept the promises signed with the 2015 Paris Agreement, the most important international treaty on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
The other rejected appeal featured the former mayor of the Transalpine country Grande-Synthe, who claims that France has not taken sufficient measures to limit global warming.
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