LA COUR EUROPEENNE SE PRONONCE SUR LES TROIS PREMIERES AFFAIRES RELATIVES AU CLIMAT: QUELQUES OBSERVATIONS SUR LA QUESTION DE LA CAUSALITÉ

. On 9 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on the first
three climate cases: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho
and others v. Portugal and 32 others, and Carême v. France. While the Duarte and Carême cases
were declared inadmissible, in the KlimaSeniorinnen case the Court adopted a remarkable
judgment in which it recognized for the first time that the ECHR implies positive
obligations for States to adopt, and effectively apply in practice, regulations and
measures capable of mitigating the present and future, potentially irreversible, effects
of climate change. The Strasbourg Court thus set out a number of general principles on
human rights violations linked to climate change, which were explicitly taken up in the
other two cases. In addition, for the first time, the Court explicitly addresses, and seeks
to systematize, a crucial issue raised in almost all climate-related litigation: the question
of causation. In this contribution, after briefly outlining the decisions taken by the Court
in the three abovementioned cases, the author aims to analyze in particular the position
explicitly expressed by the Court on this issue