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The Swiss parliament on Wednesday voted to snub a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that accused the country of being ineffective in fighting climate change.
In a statement, the parliament’s lower chamber said the ECHR had “exceeded the limits of permissible legal development and disregarded Switzerland’s democratic decision-making processes.”
The motion was adopted by a margin of 111 votes to 72 with 10 abstentions. Some lawmakers accused the European court of “violating the separation of powers.”
“Parliamentarians will not allow themselves to be reduced to extras by international judges,” lawmaker Barbara Steinemann said in a post on X.
Last week, the country’s upper house of parliament approved a similar motion criticizing the court’s ruling. Both chambers accused the ECHR of “judicial activism.”
The Strasbourg-based court ruled in April that the country had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to protect them from the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
The judgment followed a trial in which the Swiss plaintiffs accused the country of not cutting planet-warming emissions fast enough to avoid climate disasters such as heat waves that disproportionately harm older people.
The ECHR is the judicial arm of the Council of Europe, an international human rights organization separate from the EU. Its rulings are binding on the Council’s 46 members, which include all 27 EU countries.
