Vladislava Stoyanova

Biba v Albania raises multiple questions about the Court’s reasoning when State responsibility is established for breach of positive obligations under Article 8 ECHR. Given that three of the seven judges dissented, different answers are possible as to the scope and the content of these obligations in the school context and the standards for determining a breach. After briefly describing the factual circumstances, the post focuses on the standard of causation in the determination of a breach of the obligation under Article 8 and, relatedly, on the mixture of substantive and procedural deficiencies in the Court’s reasoning. Importantly, the Court found a violation not only of Article 8, but also of Article 6 based on the Albanian Constitutional Court’s incorrect calculation of the time-limit within which the applicant had had to lodge his constitutional appeal at the domestic level. This finding under Article 6 was straightforward and will not be covered here.