The ECtHR’s Swiss climate ruling: overreach or appropriate?

IT COULD BE the plot of a kitschy tear-jerker: a group of elderly Swiss ladies sue their government in an international court over greenhouse-gas emissions, and win. On April 9th the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) upheld the claim of the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen (Climate Seniors’ Association), an organisation of some 2,000 older women, that Switzerland had failed to protect them from climate change. The country’s Greens celebrated the verdict. Others were less impressed. The populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) attacked “interference by foreign judges” and called for quitting the Council of Europe, the court’s parent body. In Britain the judgment confirmed the scepticism of many Tories about the court: “complete overreach” was the verdict of Rishi Sunak, the prime minister.