The rise of microtargeted online disinformation (MOD) has raised concerns over its harms to democracy and human rights. Debates over the regulation of MOD crystallise around Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to freedom of expression, and its limited capacity to regulate disinformation. As the chapter demonstrates, the effects of disinformation are compounded by microtargeting techniques. These facilitate the surgical spread of information to homogeneous groups, based on the analysis of people’s personal data. The chapter contends that human rights protection has shifted from human rights law to other legal regimes. They centre on the protection of personal data, the regulation of online platforms and search engines and the technological systems that propel them, and the use of targeted political advertising. The chapter demonstrates this claim with reference to selected European Union legal instruments, discussing their capacity to address the harmful effects of MOD. It will be argued that the broadening of human rights protection beyond human rights law should be welcomed, but it also has significant limitations, including enforcement gaps and wide-ranging scope for exemptions.

One of the contemporary challenges involves a type of dispute in the digital environment where the law does not contain a rule that was created intentionally for such cases but a legal rule can be found that was created for similar cases in the non-digital environment (e.g., copyright infringement online compared with making copies of a cassette tape). This chapter explores how courts reason in the face of such a dilemma. Two patterns in judicial decisions can be found – consideration of (a) the purpose and function of the disputed objects or actions, and (b) the extent of harm or damages caused by the behaviour in question. The former has the potential to be worded as a principle that ‘similar actions or objects in different contexts receive a similar legal treatment if their purpose and function does not differ’, and the latter, as a principle that ‘an act which is incompatible with the text of the law but causes no harm or any risk of it will be treated as lawful’ and conversely, ‘an act which causes harm or the risk of it will be treated as unlawful, even if its incompatibility with the text of the law is vague’.

This chapter analyses the evolving role of states in safeguarding freedom of expression within the digital environment, particularly on social media platforms. It highlights how states have both negative obligations (to avoid undue interference) and positive obligations (to actively protect and ensure the right to freedom of expression). The European Court of Human Rights and other international bodies emphasise that states must create a favourable environment for public debate, protect speakers from harm, and ensure media pluralism. These obligations extend to relations between private parties, including users and internet intermediaries. The chapter emphasises that freedom of expression in the digital age requires states to actively safeguard rights while balancing regulation and accountability. It warns against reliance on private platforms for enforcing speech limitations and underscores the importance of transparent, rights-based governance.

This chapter examines the evolution of freedom of expression doctrines in the context of digital media. It focuses on how the European Court of Human Rights has adapted traditional doctrines, rooted in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to address challenges in the new media environment. The authors explore how freedom of expression, vital to democracy, must balance individual rights, societal interests, and the regulation of disinformation and hate speech in the digital age. The Court’s defence of democracy has evolved from responding to authoritarian threats in Europe’s past to addressing new risks in the digital realm. Principles such as proportionality, the prohibition of abuse of rights (Article 17), and preventing the misuse of democratic freedoms (Article 18) guide limitations on expression, ensuring they are justified and not misused for political suppression. Social media has expanded the concept of ‘public watchdogs’ beyond traditional media to include non-governmental organisations, bloggers, and activists. This evolution demands rethinking the liability and freedom of expression doctrines for platforms.

This chapter explores how within certain colonial contexts the use of internationally composed ‘mixed courts’ to guarantee the individual rights of Westerners contributed to the origins of European integration law. It first introduces readers to the origins and characteristics of these mixed courts, which operated between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries, highlighting especially the cases of the Mixed Courts of Egypt and the Mixed Court of Tangier. It then describes the personnel continuities that existed between these courts and post-Second World War European law, both within the European Communities and the Council of Europe. Finally, to further illustrate this point, the chapter will zoom in on one case before the Mixed Court of Tangier that not only raised the question of treaty law as constitutional law, but also elicited a cautious, yet not entirely negative, assessment by Nicola Catalano, who would shortly afterwards become one of the most influential early ‘Euro-lawyers’.

Chapter 2 turns to the period directly after ratification, from 1954 to 1962, and shows how this was a remarkable lively period.

It makes two distinct claims. First, it contests the pervasive image that the Convention was ‘asleep’ in the domestic legal context. Rather, the Convention was immediately tried and tested and entered the domestic context in a flurry of heated activity, as litigants and other players set out their campaigns to define what the Convention would mean.

Second, it argues that the restrictive policy of the European Commission of Human Rights was a conscious legal strategy. Following the experiences of the Dutch member of the Commission and the national interaction with the European institutions, it can be argued how restraint was indeed part of a conscious effort to let states accept the right of individual petition. Simultaneously, however, the European Court embarked on campaigns to make the Court relevant.

The chapter ends in 1962 with failure on both the domestic and the European levels to make the Convention into something more than a distant document. These failures were essential in setting the stage for the Convention’s perceived legal irrelevance in the following two decades.

Finally, Chapter 6, ‘From permissive consensus to persistent critique’, turns to the most recent past of the Convention. It shows how the critique of the eighties became unsustainable by an unforeseen event: the end of the Cold War. This galvanized the earlier hesitant governments into accepting permanent supranational oversight. However, the signatory states’ caution had not suddenly disappeared. The concerns of the 1980s may have been briefly interrupted in the 1990s, but remained a constant factor.

The Convention also became a topic of public debate in the Netherlands from 2010 onwards: in order for that debate to flourish, a fundamental change in the previous, rather self-evident acceptance of human rights as inherently desirable was brokered, as the Court got caught up in wider debates surrounding national identity and migration.

Finally, the chapter sheds light on the persistent challenges the Convention keeps posing to the Kingdom. Caught between Dutch and Caribbean unwillingness, sensitivities and financial limitations, human rights standards occasionally lose out. The Convention has come to serve as a reminder of the shared responsibility of all in addressing those problems, but remains tied to historical grown discrepancies.

Chapter 4 builds on the fourth, as it shows how European human rights were transformed in ‘the age of activism’, 1968–1979.

Crucially, it shows how these grassroots developments predated the legal revolution and formed a necessary precondition for the legal changes which followed later. This follows individual activists, lawyers and academics in their turn to Strasbourg. As some of their cases got into the European system, it provoked a reaction within the Committee of Ministers which had a lasting impact on the system as whole.

For as an answer to the complaints coming in from below, the Dutch government itself set out on a remarkable campaign to energize the European Court. It set out to change the referral policy of the Commission which, famously restrictive, almost never sent cases to the European Court.

Yet with the rise in prominence of human rights, also the question of the ‘overseas territories’ returned. In the lead-up to the independence of Suriname, human rights were deliberately kept at bay. European human rights emerged as points of contention in the Kingdom, with the Antilles embracing a close connection to the European system and Suriname eager to break free from it.

This chapter examines the diversity of international complaints mechanisms available for human rights violations. It covers regional human rights courts, nonjudicial human rights bodies, and various modes of international complaints, highlighting the differences and similarities in their approaches and functions. The chapter discusses the procedural aspects, the criteria for admissibility, and the effectiveness of different complaints mechanisms. It also explores the role of these mechanisms in providing redress for human rights violations and their impact on the development of international human rights law.

This chapter covers the European system for the protection of human rights, highlighting the roles of the Council of Europe, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). It examines the work of the European Court of Human Rights, the European Committee of Social Rights, and other specialized bodies in protecting and promoting human rights in Europe. The chapter discusses the legal and institutional framework of the European human rights system, the challenges and successes in its implementation, and the role of European institutions in advancing human rights standards.

The relevant international treaty-based law on corruption, human rights and the environment, with a focus on the convergence of these areas of law. Anti-corruption treaties, especially UNCAC, and human rights treaties are both moving towards recognition of the commonalities. Traces 3 approaches to convergence: corruption as background/context, a human-rights based approach, and a human right to be free of corruption.

While research on the right to freedom of thought (FOT), as such, is already scarce, this chapter targets the European regional human rights framework in particular, attempting to fill the existing gap in research and literature. It aims to offer an exploratory analysis of the right to FOT through the prism of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and related jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Specifically, this chapter inquires whether the right to FOT can indeed be considered a right with independent value in the context of the ECHR, or whether it must rather be understood as an ancillary right, subordinate to and dependent on related ECHR rights (in a similar fashion as Article 14). In exploring this, a distinction must be drawn between the theoretical set-up of FOT in the ECHR and the drafters’ intention compared to how the ECtHR’s interpretation and application shaped the right in practice. By focusing on the question of its nature within the ECHR this chapter aims to stimulate further engagement with this under-researched right.