In the 75 years of its existence, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has proven remarkable resilience as a safeguard for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The judicial conversation enriched (and sometimes prompted) by the ECHR is not only a European exchange, a dialogue and debate among judges and politicians, citizens and civil servants, journalists and diplomats in the Council of Europe’s 46 member states. The jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court resonates globally – it influences the International Court of Justice, it inspires (and interacts with) its Inter-American and African counterparts, and it informs debates on the major environmental, political, and technological challenges of our times, including climate change, migration, and artificial intelligence. At the same time, as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of its signing, the ECHR faces profound challenges. Familiar celebratory narratives seem to have lost their traction. What once appeared as unquestioned historical achievement is now contested.

Drawing from the conference ‘The European Convention on Human Rights at 75: Transnational Perspectives and Global Interaction’, held at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection in Berlin on 9 October 2025 and jointly convened with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, this blog symposium explores the role of the ECHR as a beacon for human dignity in times of crisis and change. The authors, human rights practitioners and academics from Europe and beyond, examine the past and present of the Convention in global and planetary contexts – and set their sights on future horizons.

With this symposium, we aim to continue thoughtful, constructive and sometimes also critical dialogue between academia and practice, intended to deepen understanding of the impact and influence of the European Convention system on other international and national human rights protection systems – and vice versa. This dialogue is, as Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection Stefanie Hubig put it in her opening remarks,  “essential if we want to thoroughly analyse what the Convention has achieved and develop ideas for addressing new challenges”. We sincerely hope that many will join the conversation.

Transnational Perspectives, Judicial Conversations, Global Interactions

As Nancy Hérnandez Lopez, the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, emphasised in conversation with Anja Seibert Fohr, judge at the ECtHR elected in respect of Germany, and Juliane Kokott, Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Strasbourg mechanism based on the ECHR has been a major inspiration for the creation of other regional human rights systems – most notably the Inter-American Court and Commission, but also the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, represented at the conference by its President Modibo Sacko, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

All these judicial and semi-judicial bodies are currently facing severe challenges testing their institutional resilience, legitimacy and authority, revealing deep struggles between constitutionalism and majoritarianism. And they have become partners in a network of courts engaged in reciprocal learning that might also provide inspiration for their engagement with domestic courts and constituencies. “As the Inter-American and African Courts, the Court of Justice of the European Union and national judiciaries engage with Strasbourg in a web of mutual learning, the ECHR’s spirit endures as a beacon of justice and courage over despair”, stresses Justice Hernández, and encourages the European Court of Human Rights to “lead through dialogue rather than dominance”.

Armin von Bogdandy, conceptualising in his contribution 73 years of European integration and the Europeanisation of national societies, calls for a closer relationship of Court and Convention with EU institutions and with European Society at large, for “more openness, more listening, more dialogue”. The Convention’s general legal structure, providing a common set of basic rights, “contributes to European society as it enables a common discourse in all corners of this heterogeneous society with diverse constitutional traditions of its various peoples”.

(European) Human Rights and the Climate Crisis

Transnational and global judicial dialogue and interaction require sound comparative methodology, Nicola Wenzel argues in her analysis of comparative arguments made in policy discussions on the right to a healthy environment (which is not explicitly contained in the ECHR). “Comparative arguments are too often cursory and superficial”, “calls for the transferral from one human rights system to another tend to underestimate the complexities involved in such legal transplants”, she argues, and warns that “unless the discipline of comparative human rights law is further developed and relied upon, too much risks being lost in translation between different legal systems”.

Against the background of an emerging plural framework of human rights-based climate-related obligations, Jannika Jahn sketches the specific contours of the European approach adopted by the European Court of Human Rights, an approach that significantly “differs, in certain respects, from those of other human rights bodies”. In her contributions, Jahn also considers how the International Court of Justice, “through the restrained posture adopted in its Advisory Opinion of July this year, has created the conditions for these interpretive trajectories to continue evolving”.

Displacement, Migration and (European) Human Rights

In her blogpost, Dana Schmalz argues that „those attacking the European Court of Human Rights for an over-reaching jurisprudence regarding migrants’ rights misconstrue the actual case law”. Schmalz calls for a more careful critical doctrinal reconstruction of the Court’s jurisprudence and for evidence-based debate – as Alice Donald had also done in her Berlin conference presentation, based on a report recently published by Oxford University’s Bonavero Institute for Human Rights. On the same panel, Catharina Ziebritzki had reflected on new narratives for strategic human rights litigation, as an antidote to more restrictive legislative developments.

Daniel Thym argues, in his contribution, that mutual reinforcement of innovative human rights judgements and legislation have “resulted in a ‘lock in’ effect which occurs when judgements that had not been very controversial originally, as they reflected a basic political consensus, effectively petrify political preferences of a specific moment in time”. In light of looming public debate, governments should focus on negotiating an “Additional Protocol No. 17 on the Interpretation of Certain Provisions in the Field of Migration and Asylum”.

Artificial Intelligence and (European) Human Rights

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere – also in Strasbourg. But not yet in the ECtHR’s case law. As Arnfinn Bårdsen, Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights, explains, the Court has just started its engagement with AI, and there are no judgments yet concerning artificial intelligence as such. “There will be no Grand Master Plan”, he stresses, the Court will proceed on a case-by-case basis, “in accordance with recognized principles of adjudication and legal method”, applying the living instrument doctrine. And probably also in dialogue with other regional Human Rights Courts who are, as Matthias Goldmann had explained in his conference presentation, also facing the challenges of dynamic technological developments in AI.

The rapid progress made within digital technologies during the past decade will also reshape the work of the ECtHR itself. International human rights courts and quasi-judicial bodies are increasingly turning to a variety of automated decision-making (ADM) tools to improve their efficiency. The “rapid deployment of AI, especially generative AI, in judicial settings is quite unsettling”, Maria Pilar Llorens observes in her contribution, mapping the challenges of AI in and for human rights courts.

Veronika Fikfak and Laurence Helfer characterise the introduction of ADM to international human rights courts and review bodies as “double-edged sword”: “While it promises relief for overburdened judges, registries and secretariats, increased efficiency and improved consistency, it also raises fundamental questions about the essential nature of rights adjudication, including the preservation of judicial discretion and the accountability of international institutions.” The future lies, the authors claim, in adoption and refinement, “supported by robust institutional oversight and explainability”.

And what to wish for?

The final words of the symposium will be given to two scholars and human rights practitioners whose lives and careers are closely linked to the European Convention on Human Rights. Başak Çalı and Jörg Polakiewicz reflect on a long and productive conference day in Berlin and express their personal wishes to a Convention that is, as they remind us, ever in need of doctrinal renewal and innovation, critique and conversation. And of people committed to making it a reality.