Samenvatting

In a footnote on the last page of her article, Janneke Gerards writes: ‘Here I will leave to one side the debate on the involvement of the ECHR with questions that are not really constitutional.’ But it is precisely the involvement of the ECHR with questions that are ‘not really constitutional’ – and therefore not really fundamental – that the debate is about. It is regrettable that those who are indignant about my critique of the course that the ECHR is currently taking hardly – if ever – respond to my arguments against such an expansive course. The fact that the Court is now facing a pile of waiting cases rapidly approaching 200,000, as well as problems of legitimacy after taking a stand in undeniably political cases such as prisoners’ voting rights, limits to the freedom of speech, as well as its hinting that it would disapprove of a ban on the burqa, all undermine and impede what the ECHR was originally set up for: to be an effective, swift and authoritative voice in the protection of ‘fundamental principles of justice’. By indulging in meddlesomeness and political correctness, the ECHR is digging its own grave.