European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said on Tuesday that Greece had violated the right of Andreas Georgiou, the former head of the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), to a fair hearing, when a top local court denied his request to refer a legal question concerning his care to the EU Court of Justice.

The European Court of Human Rights on March 7 condemned Türkiye for failing to protect the private life of Berrak Tüzünataç, a prominent Turkish actress who had been secretly filmed kissing Şahan Gökbakar, one of the most famous screen faces in the country and star of blockbuster comic movies, at her home in footage broadcast on television.

Neither gender-affirming hormone therapy nor sex reassignment surgery is available in Albania, meaning transgender Albanians like Fiona face having to self-medicate or travel to North Macedonia, Serbia or Turkey. The costs, financial and psychological, can be huge.

Greece's latest conviction by the European Court of Human Rights over the case of the former general secretary of public revenues draws a line for the country's political system that it ought to have drawn on its own: looking for scandal in order to sully the reputation of your rival should never reach the point of violating the presumption of innocence. Politicians are not prosecutors. 

Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has harshly criticized some prominent Western countries, including the United States, for closing their consulates and other missions in Istanbul over terror threat, accusing them of staging a psychological warfare against Türkiye.

The Metropolis of Chisinau and All of Moldova, widely known as the Moldovan Orthodox Church, asked the government on Monday not to recognise same-sex couples' partnerships as legal or bring in legislation to protect LGBT couples' rights in line with a recent European Court of Human Rights ruling.

A Muslim in Athens praying in a new mosque, the first official place of worship for Muslims in Athens, 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ORESTI PANAGIOTOU

The letter focuses on its educational and religious problems and its legal harassment for use of the word "Turkish".

Bulgaria is at the top of the ranking of EU member states in terms of the number of cases in the so-called "enhanced procedure" (clusters of cases posing structural and systemic problems) at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The country is in sixth place after Russia (16%), Ukraine (15%), Turkey (11%), Romania (10%) and Italy (7%).

Trials that drag on for years raise serious questions about the administration of justice in Greece, while the fines imposed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against our country almost exclusively stem from the glacial pace of the Greek justice system.

"In Bulgaria there are structures and organizations that openly support Nazism, they regularly organize a march in the name of the ideologist of Bulgarian Nazism and a torchlight procession in honor of a Bulgarian accomplice of the fascists - military pilot Dimitar Spisarevski.