Why the Swiss women's climate victory is such a big deal
A group of Swiss women, all aged 64 and over, made history last week by winning the first ever climate case heard by the European Court of Human Rights. But what does their victory mean for climate policy across Europe? We ring up international courts reporter Molly Quell to find out. We're also talking about an artistic sense-of-humour failure, a Swedish app controversy, and why Polish kids are particularly big fans of the new government.
You can find Molly on Twitter here.
This week's Inspiration Station offerings: 'Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York)' - tickets for London's Criterion Theatre; 'Two Strangers' cast recording; the 'Goulash' newsletter.
Producer: Katz Laszlo
Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
Instagram | Threads | Twitter | Mastodon | hello@europeanspodcast.com
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
INTRODUCTION - 00’22”
KATY: Hello, and welcome to The Europeans, a podcast based on a beautiful long-distance friendship between two friends in Paris and Amsterdam. Except something awkward happened this weekend, didn't it Dominic?
DOMINIC: We were both in London and Katy said she didn't have time to see me.
K: That is a l– actually, that's not a lie. That's… That's very true. I did say I didn't have time to see – well, I said that you needed to fit around my military schedule.
D: True.
K: And you couldn't do that. So let's blame you.
D: Honestly, I also didn't really have time to see you, so it's fine.
K: Nerr, be like that. Actually, worse than not seeing each other, the other awkward thing is that we basically had the same weekend in that we both went separately to see the new hit musical written by this podcast’s resident theme music composer.
D: It's true. More about that in our inspiration station later when I'm giving my official Europeans podcast review.
K: Ooh, spoiler alert. I'm excited for that. What else are we talking about this week?
D: Well, this week we're going to be checking in with our favourite international courts reporter, Molly Quell. Molly will be joining producer Katz Laszlo later on in the show for a chat about the significance and the consequences of the landmark legal victory for 2000 older Swiss women who took their government to the highest court in Europe for not doing enough to limit climate change, and they won last week.
K: Yay!
D: You possibly heard our special episode about this case that was aired shortly after the ruling last year and re-released this past weekend. But if not, go listen to it now –
K: Right now, or after they've listened to what we're talking about just now?
D: No, they can listen to it after they've listened to this episode.
K: Okay.
D: I personally cannot wait to hear this conversation with Molly and Katz because I've been obsessed by this courtroom drama, and now it's over I'm so curious to know what kind of effect it's actually going to have on limiting climate change.
K: Me too.
D: That's coming up later on in the show. But first, it's time for Good Week, Bad Week.
GOOD WEEK - 02’34”
D: Who's had a good week, Katy?
K: I'm gonna give Good Week to people in the Swedish city of Uppsala who are looking to make a bit of extra cash. Because an interesting new business opportunity has just landed in their laps, in the form of a new app that caught my eye this week. The app is called Scout Park, and the idea behind it is to allow you, a member of the public, to earn money by reporting improperly parked cars. Yes, that's right. You can now make a living in Uppsala by snitching on your fellow residents who have parked badly. It's quite an interesting idea, no?
D: I’m not sure why I think about this. I think it maybe, like, brings out the worst in us all.
K: Yeah, my first thought was that this sounded like something from a dystopian novel set in a grim surveillance state. But actually, I was quite surprised to find out how many people don't feel the same way as me about that. The story sparked quite a lot of discussion on Reddit this week. It turns out that a lot of people on the internet really hate bad parking and think this is, like, one of the key things that needs fixing about society. I'll just quote you a couple of Europeans who posted on Reddit. ‘I would be rich if this app landed in Portugal.’ ‘Okay, we need this in Belgrade and Novi Sad. People will park goddamn anywhere.’ Someone else wrote: ‘I wish so badly that this was a thing everywhere. And not just to report wrongly parked cars. But even more importantly, in my opinion, to report reckless driving, running, stop signs, speeding in school zones, etc. Send a video of a driver breaking the law to an agency, they get a ticket, you get a reward.’ So there do seem to be quite a few people out there who like this idea of getting paid to report minor infringements of the rules.
D: I think we have to acknowledge that there's a difference between, like, dangerous driving and driving fast in a school zone, and parking in the wrong place. Like, I actually think maybe the idea of dobbing in someone who's been driving dangerously is a good idea. But someone who’s parked in the wrong place? Seriously, it's not like risking anyone's life is it? Well, maybe it is in some cases.
K: Well, you say that. But what about parking that, you know, I've seen ambulances blocked from getting passed quickly because somebody's parked in an appalling way.
D: That's true.
K: And also as a cyclist, like there are many situations where there are people like parked in bike lanes and you just think, ‘This is absolutely criminal. There should be an app to report people like you!’
D: That's true. But on the other hand, parking is so expensive in so many cities in Europe. The people can't actually afford to park where they need to. So I feel sorry for them if they're also getting caught out by their neighbours.
K: This is a rare pro-motorist perspective from Dominic Kramer.
D: Yeah, I know. I dunno what's happened?
K: I feel like this is going to spark a lot of discussion in our inbox. But um, there were quite a few people who, like me, instinctively found this a bit chilling, and maybe a reminder of some of humanity's darker experiments with encouraging people to spy on their neighbours. We do have quite a lot of experience of that on this continent. The name of the app is Scout Park, but there were some quite good alternative names suggested on Reddit. What do you think of these? ‘Snitches get riches.’
D: Yeah, it's snappy.
K: Nark Park.
D: I don't get it.
K: Like, nark? You know, like being a nark? No?
D: No, I don't know what that is.
K: Oh.
D: Narcotics?
K: No, a nark is a word for a police informer.
D: Oh, I didn't know that.
K: Oh. Maybe that's a British-ism. Anyway –
D: I am British!
K: You’ve learned a new word today. This one's not a name suggestion, it's more of a slogan idea. But what about this: ‘Scout Park. Entry Level bounty hunting!’
D: Great. What is the business model here? Like, is it the City Council that's paying people or is it there's some business in the middle that's like, somehow making lots of money?
K: Yeah, it's not the city council. And actually, I should clarify, the municipal parking agency in Uppsala have said that they do not want to work with this app. They've said that it encourages snitching and generally they think the idea is a bit gross. Scout Park, the company behind the app, is currently only working with one private car park management company in Uppsala, it's called Parkia. And please correct me if I'm wrong about this Uppsala residents. But I think how it works is, if a car is parked incorrectly in a Parkia car park – so, it's parked over one of the lines or something like that – and this is spotted by an eagle-eyed user of the app, the app user would send a picture of the badly-parked car with its number plate and everything to the app. The naughty car owner would then have to give Parkia a fine of, I don’t know, for example, 500 kronor, so about 40 euros, and then Parkia, the management company, would have to pay maybe 200 kronor of that overall fee to the app company. And then the app, in turn, would pay the person that spotted the infringement a small amount of money. I think it's 100 kronor. So about €8.50. Just a little tip, but you could maybe make a decent amount of money if you walked around all day, looking for cars parked over the lines and taking photos of them. You would basically be becoming a freelance parking inspector. According to an interview with the company CEO in the local paper, the UNT, Scout Park have already handed out cash for about 1000 infractions that people have spotted in Uppsala.
D: Wow.
K: So people are starting to make a little bit of money out of this thing.
D: Is that how the company is justifying it, that it's just a way to give some customers some quick cash?
K: Yeah, it's interesting. So the CEO is this guy called Erik Englund. And he wrote a really long LinkedIn post about it, first of all, confirming that this is a real business, it wasn't an April Fool's joke. Because apparently, the first Swedish news reports about this came out on April 1st, and it took people a while to realise, ‘Oh, wait a second, this isn't a joke. This is a real company.’ Anyway, Erik wrote this long post making the commercial case and also the moral case for his app. And he said he realised that there was an opportunity here to create, quote, ‘the world's easiest extra job, that anyone can do at any time, and have money land in their account immediately. Many people today are living from paycheck to paycheck. And with the inflation of recent years, the standard of living in many households has had to be lowered because wages have not increased at the same rate.’ He was challenged by the reporter from the local newspaper, who asked him if he was worried that he was creating a society of informants. And he said, ‘I don't see that as a problem. The only consequence is that people won't get away with this anymore.’
D: This whole like cost of living argumentation – I don't buy it, because it just means more people are going to be fined as well, which is also something that's going to make it harder for them to cover the cost of living.
K: That's true. Erik at least doesn't seem to be losing sleep over it. He's also said that he's had a lot more interest beyond Uppsala since the media started writing about it. He said that Scout Park is in talks with a large unnamed Swedish municipality to launch it there. And he's pitching this as an expansion of Sweden's gig economy that will potentially benefit anyone over the age of 16 with a social security number. Those are the only qualifications you need to sign up to Scout Park.
D: I'm just laughing at ‘large unnamed Swedish municipality’, I’m imagining a Swedish municipality that hasn't been given a name yet.
K: It's still deciding.
D: Is this a world first? Has anyone ever tried doing this before, with getting people to snitch on their neighbours for parking violations?
K: It's not a world first, no.
D: Oh!
K: There are a bunch of apps in different countries where you can report bad parking just because it's annoyed you, so, not for money. So in Portugal, for example, there is an app that you can just use to generally tell local authorities, ‘Hey, there's a badly parked car here and it's blocking the road’ or whatever. In terms of apps that offer money to report bad parking, I found a couple in the UK and US that seems to have existed previously, but don't seem to anymore. So clearly this model of paying people for tipping off the authorities didn't work for those companies. Will the Swedish app be any different? I don't know. But I'm kind of intrigued to find out.
D: Who's getting good week again?
K: The people who want to make a quick buck by becoming freelance parking attendants.
D: Okay. Yeah, morally dubious.
K: I'm really interested to hear people's thoughts about this. Email us, hello at europeans podcast.com. Who has had a bad week?
BAD WEEK - 10’37”
D: I'm giving Bad Week to a technician who works at a modern art museum in Munich. I don't know the name of the technician, that hasn't been made public. But I know that this technician is 51 years old, he is a man, and he was sacked by Pinakothek der Moderne and barred from any of the Bavarian state art collections after he had the gumption to hang one of his own artworks in an exhibition in the museum without permission.
K: I love this. That's such a ballsy move. Is it actually any good, this painting? What does it look like?
D: It's a portrait of a family of four – or more like a portrait of their clothes, the actual people are missing, kind of void whitespace.
K: Interesting.
D: Would it have been selected to be displayed in one of the most prestigious modern art galleries in Europe? Who am I to say. But the cheeky move has landed the technician in hot water and he is facing the consequences.
K: I have so many questions. Like, first of all, how long did this painting stay up before people spotted, ‘Like hang on a second, this is not actually part of the exhibition?’
D: Well apparently it stayed up for a whole day. The artwork was put up by the technician in the early hours of the morning before the building was open to the public. No one noticed him walking around with a drill, because he's a technician at the gallery, so it was fine. Staff, however, did spot pretty quickly after the museum opened that that piece of art is not meant to be there. But they decided to leave it up and take it down once the museum was closed at the end of the day because they thought that would be less intrusive and bring less attention to this unintended artwork. And I should mention that it actually happened in February. So, it’s not strictly accurate to say that this week was a bad week for him. But I'm talking about it today because the news about the artistic stunt has only dribbled out over the past week or so.
K: And how come we don't know his name?
D: Well, it's because his name hasn't been released by the gallery. They don't want to give him publicity. They also don't want to encourage copycat pranks. I've been a bit surprised that the artist hasn't outed himself, because you'd assume he was doing this, at least to some extent, because he was hoping for publicity as an artist.
K: Right.
D: But I read that some suspect he's signed a confidentiality clause in his dissolution agreement, which is the contract that cancelled his employment contract. So he may not be allowed to talk about it.
K: Damn, so he can't even profit from his 15 minutes of fame.
D: Yeah, apparently not.
K: I don't know how fair it is that this guy actually lost his job over this.
D: Yeah, I don't know either. I was quite surprised at how seriously the Pinakothek was taking this incident. The news actually leaked out initially via a police report. So they'd got the authorities involved. Initially, they were going to press charges against him for criminal damage, he drilled some holes in the wall to hang the work. But they have since dropped the criminal complaint and instead decided to punish him by putting out some extremely shady comments about his art in the international press.
K: Oh, that's actually that's a good punishment.
D: Here are two of the shadiest comments I read, both given to the Guardian. The spokesman said the employee ‘considers himself as an artist, and most likely saw his role in the museum's installation team as a day job to support his true calling.’ ‘Considers himself as an artist’ is such a burn.
K: Devastating.
D: The other official put-down they released is, quote, ‘All I can say is that we did not receive any positive feedback on the addition from visitors to the gallery.’
K: So mean!
D: It is a bit mean, and I kind of feel like there's been a bit of a sense of humour failure at the Pinakothek der Moderne, maybe I should be giving bad week to this modern art gallery's sense of humour. And there's actually another recent example of an artist putting up a piece without permission in Germany, where the gallery responded much more lightheartedly. Last year at a temporary exhibition in Bonn, the organisers discovered an extra piece of artwork and didn't know how it had got there. Instead of contacting the police as happened in Munich, they put up a message on social media saying, ‘We think this is funny and we'd like to know the artist, so get in touch, there will be no trouble, word of honour.’
K: Just to be the boring person in the room, I do feel like the Munich museum does have a point and that if they did treat this as a joke, it really would encourage people to do it over and over again.
D: That's true. And the Bonn example is slightly different because it was just in a temporary exhibition. In that case, actually, the artist came forward and eventually sold the piece that they'd put up at auction for over 3,500 euros.
K: Wow!
D: Which they didn't take for themselves. They gave the proceeds to an art charity, which is a very nice way of dealing with this guerilla art. I actually had a look into other artists who have snuck their work into museums, and there's quite a long history and tradition of artists doing this. There are of course, the famous instances of Banksy putting up various pieces of artworks in galleries from the Louvre to Tate Britain, he did this quite a lot in the early noughties. But my favourite story is this one of an Israeli artist Eliezer Sonnenschein, who kept sneaking his art into the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in the 1990s. His work kept being taken down until one day when the curator saw his latest piece, which was small sculptures of poop, pasta and cigarettes. The curator thought, ‘Oh, I quite like this actually,’ and decided to allow it to stay. And the artist has gone on to have quite a nice career, including having work shown at the very prestigious Venice Biennale Gala.
K: Nice.
D: So maybe this technician in Munich was hoping his guerilla exhibiting would have a similar effect. And it has certainly caught the art world's attention. But the lack of a name being revealed means it's a bit of a backfire. And I feel a bit sorry for him because actually, according to a Guardian piece of reporting, some museum insiders also think it's an overreaction. The Guardian sources pointed out that the exhibition where the artwork was hung was a show called ‘Glitch: on the art of interference’.
K: Oh!
D: The exhibition was looking at the art of interference and the, quote, aesthetics of the flawed. So this context makes it seem even more of an overreaction. The source told The Guardian that the guerilla art hanging was actually an artistic challenge. They said, ‘The technician who hung up the picture wasn't lusting for fame.’ And it sounds like the Pinakothek has failed that artistic challenge by taking it very seriously. Anyway, Bad Week for the wannabe artist in Munich. And I think Bad Week for the Pinakothek in Munich too. A gallery which is very nice. I've visited a few times and think you should all go there anyway.
K: Despite the lack of a sense of humour.
D: Indeed.
* * *
K: I don't want to sound too boastful, listeners. But the episode that we made about the KlimaSeniorinnen case, which we're about to get an update on, I re-listened to it to remind myself of the details, and it is so good. It made me really proud of what we do here at The Europeans in humanising the big stories of our continent, and making things like climate litigation feel accessible. And we were only able to make that episode thanks to the support of our listeners, who contributed a serious chunk of the cash that went into making it. So thank you listeners. Along with the kind of chatty episodes that we make every week, the kind that you're listening to right now, we're hoping to make more episodes like the KlimaSeniorinnen one in the coming months – and years, I hope. More kind of ambitious deep dives. And we would love it if you could help us to do that by sending a little bit of cash our way, if you'd like what we do.
D: Yes, we are an independent podcast without any structural help from a big media outlet. And there aren't actually many independent podcasts out there, especially not many that have been running as long as ours. And it's only because of the kindness of lovely listeners like you, so please head to Patreon.com/europeanspodcast if you can help out.
K: The latest wonderful people we would like to thank for signing up are Fabian and Alzbeta, thank you both so much.
D: And also Michael for increasing his donation.
K: Oh, I missed that! Thanks, Michael.
INTERVIEW WITH MOLLY QUELL - 19’19”
K: We're joined for this next bit of the show by producer Katz Laszlo, hey Katz.
KATZ LASZLO: Hi!
K: What brings you here?
KL: So I'm back because we have a verdict on the KlimaSeniorinnen. And I was really excited because last Saturday I was at this fossil fuel subsidy protest and Greta Thunberg was also there. And then like two days later, I saw that she was in Strasbourg for the verdict announcement of the KlimaSeniorinnen case and I thought, ‘Man, Greta doesn't even know I exist, but we have so much in common.’
K: That’s quite a sad thought.
KL: So, anyway, over the weekend, we re-aired the episode that we made, and it explains this climate case where a group of older Swiss women took their own state, Switzerland, all the way to the European Court of Human Rights for not doing enough about climate change. They argued that by not doing enough to mitigate climate change, Switzerland is violating their human rights, because they're more likely to die in heat waves, because they can't leave the house and see their family during heat waves, and also because they weren't given due process. Switzerland wouldn't hear the case. And as you said, Dominic, they won!
K AND D: Yay!
KL: So exciting. The other climate cases were also heard of two others, one about a French mayor and one about a group of Portuguese children. They were both dismissed for technical reasons. But regardless, even the people that lost were so excited because this was a huge historic moment. The court that is in charge of the European human rights law has officially come out to say, ‘Yes, climate change has a place in human rights law and in our courts.’
D: And as we heard on the episode you made on this, if all the cases had lost, it would have been quite a regressive step for climate cases.
KL: Yeah, it would have been really massive. So the stakes are really high. It's really quite complicated. So we decided to ring up one of those experts we heard from, international court journalist Molly Quell, who was at the hearing, and she told us all about it.
* * *
KL: Hi, nice to see you. I've been like feeling excited all week because of like – ‘The story! It happened!
MOLLY QUELL: The story. Yeah, it's crazy.
KL: So we interviewed you last year. Just after the hearing of KlimaSeniorinnen versus Switzerland.
M: Yeah.
KL: And at the time, you said you'd never seen the European Court of Human Rights so packed.
M: Forget it. Overwrite it.
KK: What was the mood like on verdict day, April 9?
M: It’s crazy. It was insane. It was bonkers. I mean, usually you go to this court, and there's like nobody there. Yeah. So this was like nothing I've ever seen, like, you can just write off everything I had previously said about things being wild. This was like every news agency you've ever heard of and 112 that you never have were there. And there's a lot of lawyers and 28 of the 32 applicant countries were present, like a representative was like present. So this was huge. Well, and Greta Thunberg, was there. So of course, I got to interview her. We had like a five-minute one-on-one, it was very exciting.
KL: So there are all of these people. And what happened? What did the judges say?
M: Usually, when the ECHR does a ruling, it's like the most boring six minutes of your life. They like walk in, the judge sits down. And then they read what they call the operative paragraph, which is this thing that sort of says like, ‘By a decision of, you know, 15 to two, the court finds that there has been a violation of article eight subparagraph, whatever.’ And it's completely you don't understand it, it's totally unquotable, it's completely useless. So this was what we were expecting. And Judge O'Leary, who's the presiding judge, sits down and the first thing she says right off the bat is, ‘We've made a decision to do this differently.# And then she proceeded to read the decision and these rulings, but like with some explanation about the violations that they had found in kind of the cases in a way that was clearly, this was still written by lawyers, but was significantly better than what we usually get. Yeah, and then she had this whole thing about how, you know, climate change is like a human right and states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from the effects of it.
KL: That is an enormous and massive moment in history.
M: Yeah.
KL: Can you walk us through? What is the significance that she said climate change does have a place in human rights law?
M: I mean, it's huge. Like this is, like you said, this is a huge, it's a significant moment. I think in like human history, it's the first time an international court has ruled on climate change. And it's the first time we've seen a decision that's kind of so explicitly linking climate change to human rights in these ways. There have been climate change case decisions in national courts. So you have this very famous one from the Netherlands, the Urgenda decision. There has also been one in Germany, one in Belgium, and those cases relied on the European Convention of Human Rights. You know, the lawyers in those cases argued that the Convention protects people's rights to have a livable climate. And so if the ECHR decided last week, that in fact was not the case, not only would this have undermined the cases that were before it, but it also would have called into question these other national court decisions. So I think there was a lot kind of riding on the line in the morning. What they ultimately concluded was, is that there had been a violation, there's a couple of violations, but the biggest one was was article eight, which is kind of where the court sort of shoves all problematic decisions it doesn't know what to do with, you know? Essentially saying that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from the ill effects of climate change. In this particular case, it had to do with a bunch of senior Swiss women. They kind of highlighted the elderly's susceptibility to rising temperatures in particular.
KL: So they did rule that the Swiss women were victims of having their human rights violated?
M: No. So it's a little complicated. Actually, the court has no mechanism for like mass rights claims, like there is no sort of like, you get together with a bunch of people and you like file a case. So there was a real question regarding the Swiss case as to what exactly we're going to do. Because of course, if you say that the Swiss women are impacted by climate change, then everybody is impacted by climate change. That means everybody who lives in the 46 Council of Europe countries could bring an individual case at the ECHR. The ECHR is also completely inundated, has been inundated for years, and now has a huge budget deficit because it booted out Russia. And what they did was, I think, a very smart and pragmatic choice, which is they said, individually, the applicants do not have victim status, but this group, this organisation did. And so what that means is like future cases about climate change, going forward, will have to kind of be brought kind of bundled together in some sort of group capacity, which also makes it easier for people to bring claims because it's really expensive to bring these cases to courts. The Swiss women's, I think the money that they kind of paid out was like 80,000 euros. Like, I don't have 80,000 euros to take a case to the ECHR. And so yeah, it was kind of like a pragmatic ruling in that way, which you don't often see from the ECHR. So I gotta give them props for kind of being pragmatist, I think, about stuff like this.
KL: They've been doing a lot of new things in the past week.
M: I know. It turns out old dogs can learn new tricks. Like, 70-year-old legal institutions can in fact do things differently.
KL: Good week for 70-year-olds all around.
M: Yeah, they – you should give them Good Week, I think, on the podcast.
KL: Exactly. Okay, but it wasn't ruled that the right to life was violated, right?
M: No, it's article eight. So that's respect for private and family life, which is like the catch all one. And then also, there was a violation of article six, which is like, right to a fair trial kind of stuff. Switzerland summarily dismissed the case. And they said that this didn't give them like due procedure, basically. They then went on to say that Switzerland hasn't done enough to sort of combat climate change, which is also a big step, because Switzerland is like a big rich European country. So if Switzerland hasn't done enough, then like, nobody's done enough, basically.
KL: And to start with Switzerland, how does this ruling affect how climate policy will be made in Switzerland? Like, how much time do they have? Could they be fined? Who decides what it's enough if they do get fined? Who would be paid? I have a lot of questions.
M: There's a lot of questions, and there's not really a lot of clear answers. So the way that judgments are enforced at the court is, it runs through this thing called the Council of Ministers. And they're going to kind of have to see what Switzerland does, and then kind of determine if that kind of meets the obligations. When I spoke to Switzerland's representative after the hearing, what he said is, it's you know, it's clear from the ruling that decisions about measures on climate change are up to national legislatures, these are up to like national governments. The Court President had said this kind of at the outset, that we've kind of made this very clear statement that like sort of what measures to be taken, this has to be determined by governments, the court can't kind of dictate this. So now Switzerland has to go back and kind of make a play on and sort of see what measures it's going to take. And there are some timeframes for this, but a lot of this stuff kind of gets negotiated behind closed doors, they can drag on for a while. So I think there's some obligations. The Swiss ladies were very adamant that they were going to be following up with their government and making sure that they are like, sort of meeting these obligations. And there could be some kind of fining procedure, or maybe it depends a little bit – that kind of all sort of runs kind of through this process that the ECHR has. But I think it's worth stressing that, unlike criticisms that are sometimes lodged at other international courts that they have, like no enforcement mechanism, right? You hear this a bunch about the the International Court of Justice, right, there's no way to enforce these decisions. It's not the case at the ECHR, they have a much more effective enforcement mechanism, you know, they can like fine people, they can, they can kick people out, they can rescind their voting rights for countries. Like, they have done this stuff in the past for kind of failing to meet their rulings. So countries usually do try mostly to like, kind of meet the obligations. And, you know, I think Switzerland seems at least from what I was speaking to them, that they're gonna, you know, kind of try to figure out what this means exactly, and how you kind of meet these obligations.
KL: And so Switzerland hasn't been fined now, but there's a chance that they could be if they didn’t do this?
M: Yeah. exactly. I mean, this case is so unprecedented that it's like, what does it mean to meet this obligation now? Like, there is no kind of previous standards. You know, in a lot of other cases, it's sort of like, well, ‘you've been, I don’t know, detaining undocumented migrants for too long, and so you have to change your detention practices. But we've got a bunch of examples of other detention cases where, you know, 90 days or six months or whatever is like a reasonable amount of time.’ Like, I don't know. We don't have anything like this on climate change. So the judge talked about, like, the rights of the unborn. By which I do not mean foetuses, I mean like literally like people who are not conceived of as people yet, right, are not protected by the convention, but of course, decisions that are being made today will impact these people who are born in the future. And so like how much of an obligation does the convention have to those future people? Is a question. And I think that is the question that's probably going to come up as we go forward at the court. I suspect we're gonna see some more of that in relation to climate change as well.
KL: That's super interesting. I've heard that being talked about in the media, but never in a court before.
M: Yeah.
KL: You've talked about it a bit already. But how does this ruling affect the other 45 countries in the Council of Europe?
M: Well, we are recording this after I got back from these hearings today in the Netherlands involving Shell and Milieudefensie.
KL: Yes.
M: And they are already arguing, both Shell and Milieudefensie are arguing that this Strasbourg ruling is in their favour. So you are already seeing the effects of this decision.
KL: Wow, that's incredible. It’s been three days.
M: It's been three days. I tweeted something along the lines of like, ‘A lot of times I'm critical of international justice for like taking too long, but I'm like, still tired from the Strasbourg trip and already hearing this decision being argued in international courts.’ Like, never happens.
KL: So I was gonna ask, do you think it's realistic that this ruling impacts that Shell case? But it sounds like the answer is yes.
M: Yeah. Well, it's 100% going to impact the Shell case. So Shell, of course, says that like, well, the ruling makes it clear that climate change is the state's obligation, that governments are the ones who have to do this kind of stuff, not companies. This was Shell’s argument in court today. And of course, the NGO that's brought this lawsuit that's now on appeal is saying, ‘Well, the courts made it very clear that climate change is a human rights issue. And everybody is obliged to kind of, you know, make sure that human rights are not violated. And so, you know, screw you Shell, basically.’ So yeah, you're already seeing the effects of this, literally, today, I was already like seeing this, and you're only gonna see more of that.
KL: How have the reactions been just for people overall?
M: I mean, I think, you know, of the crowd that was there, people were thrilled. There was a lot of cheering and applauding and stuff. And I think amongst kind of the circles that I run in, people were very enthusiastic. But obviously, that's a self-selected sample. The Swiss representative was quite nuancedm I thought, in his response, I asked him if he was disappointed, and he said that an agent of the government is neither excited nor disappointed in a ruling. And I was like, that's a very Swiss answer, because agents are very often excited or disappointed in the courts. I have read that there has been some pushback by Swiss politicians that kind of, in the Swiss media saying that this is like an overstep, there was some discussion about this being an overstep in the UK press.
KL: Actually, one of the main critiques I've seen from politicians, both in Switzerland and abroad, which was also an argument that was used during the arguing of the case, was that it would be dangerous for courts to get involved in these democratic issues. How would you respond to that, as someone who spends a lot of time looking at courts?
M: I'm unimpressed by this argument. Let's say that. You know, Switzerland has this strong history of like referendum in ways that other countries don't in the same way, but you're still bound by rule of law and human rights even as a voting population, right, that you can't, you shouldn't be able to pass rules and legislation that like violates, yeah, now what is international law. So I don't think it's fair to say that that's like a huge overreach, or it's a huge overstep. You know, lawyers for, I can't remember in which case it was, made this point that like, yeah, if you don't have a livable planet, human rights issues don't really matter, right? It doesn't matter if your right to family life is protected. And you know, gay marriage is protected, and your right to like, not be harassed by your government is protected, if we can't live here anymore, like if humans aren't surviving.
KL: And do you think that's a realistic thing we might expect in the next few years, that climate issues will be written into human rights law?
M: I mean, they seem to be making some progress with this at the ECHR. This is, you know, these things always take like 80 bajillion years to kind of run through, you kind of get a vote for it and vote about it. And it's, you know, it's a lot, but you're also seeing this, I mean, the International Criminal Court has been moving forward with the crime of ecocide, right? So like destruction of, yeah, ecological things as a crime against humanity, as a war crime. And, you know, so this, this discussion has kind of been underway, I think, for for a long time. And It’s been fighting its way into international legal cases and national courts as well. There is a climate change advisory opinion pending at the International Court of Justice, that will be a big thing. Hearings on that will be held probably early next year. And there's also an advisory opinion pending at the Inter-America Court of Human Rights. So yeah, I mean, we're only going to see more and more and more judicial rulings on, yeah, on climate change, which, I mean, I think the surprising thing is is that it took that – you know, til 2024 to get that, as opposed to it happening before. But, yeah.
KL: Maybe we've already done the largest section of those 80 bajillion years.
M: Yeah, I hope so. You know, you slowly start to see progress. And I guess we can only hope that it's fast enough.
KL: I re-listened to your previous interview this morning and heard you say, ‘If Switzerland loses, then everybody leaves? Well, except humanity.’ Which I think sums it up. I'm very happy to check in with you almost a year later and find out that humanity does win this week.
M: Sometimes, yeah. Going forward.
* * *
KL: I really enjoyed talking to Molly again. And I've been thinking a lot about something Pia said in the first episode we made, that sometimes states or newspapers, I've even seen it in the past week, they argue that this subject, that climate change, has no place in the courts and that it's not democratic. And Pia is a former politician, she was in the Green Party in Switzerland for a long time. So she knows a lot about democracy. And she made the point that democracy has two ‘legs’, it has the government, and it has the courts, and the courts are there to hold everyone including the government to account.
D: Right, we don't get to vote on everything.
KL: Yeah, like some things are just illegal, you can't just vote to kill people or something. For example. So yeah, if the state is not meeting your human rights, or in this case, also, if it's not meeting its own climate goals, then the court is above democracy. And I think that's something I knew in the background, but it had never hit me quite as hard as during reporting this. So thank you, Pia, and this whole case, for teaching us a lot about these courts.
K: I have to say this victory by the KlimaSeniorinnen, I felt like it's healed my soul a little bit. Like fine, this case alone isn't going to stop climate change in its tracks. But it does show that action works. Activism can work, using the democratic means at our disposal, including the courts, to force governments into action, it does something. And that makes me feel a little bit less powerless when I think about climate change.
KL: Absolutely.
D: It was really a rare bit of good news.
KL: Yes, I think we all needed some good climate news. Let's cling on that for at least the next few weeks.
K: Thanks so much, Katz, for doing the interview!
KL: Bye!
D: Bye bye.
THE INSPIRATION STATION - 37’44”
K: It's time to pull into the Inspiration Station. What have you been enjoying this week? I know already.
D: Yes. Well, as you spoiled at the beginning of the show, I went to the hottest ticket in London town, a musical that is transferring to London's West End. And a musical that is composed by our jingle man, Jim Barne. He's famous!
K: He was already famous, for making our jingle!
D: It's true. He's even more famous now. He's written a rom-com musical that is currently in its last few days of previews at the Criterion Theatre in London and has already received rave reviews for its run last year at the Kiln Theatre. It's called Two Strangers Carry A Cake Across New York. And I loved it. I really recommend it to anyone who is passing through London anytime soon. It's got a cast of only two, two absolutely brilliant singing actors. And it's got a really deceptively simple looking set, which does things you wouldn't expect it to do. The evening is so entertaining, charming, funny and exactly what I needed on Saturday night as there were terrifying bits of news developing across the world. So if you feel like you need some good old-fashioned romantic, comical musical theatre, then head to Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York.
K: And we'll put a link in the show notes again for the EP. There's a few songs that the cast recorded that are now on Spotify. So if you're not in London, which you almost definitely aren't, you can enjoy it anyway.
D: What have you been enjoying this week? Katy,
K: I've got a newsletter to recommend this week. It's called Goulash. It is not a soup-based newsletter as you might expect. It is an investigative journalism newsletter from Central Europe. It's written by an excellent former guest of ours, the Hungarian investigative reporter, Szabolcs Panyi. And I cannot recommend this enough for anyone who's interested in Central European politics, and going quite a lot deeper into what's happening in Central Europe than what you're likely to get in most international English-language media outlets. There's a new edition every two weeks, and the most recent one has a nice, juicy deep dive into something that we actually talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show, which is Russian and Chinese influence in Central Europe, and I'm now making my way through previous issues. Because it's been running since mid-last year, I think. I'm a bit late to the party. But it's great. Well worth your time. Yeah, do yourself a favour and serve yourself a nice big helping of Goulash.
D: It's great. I'd stumbled across it a few months ago as well. Good tip.
HAPPY ENDING - 40’25”
D: I spotted some incredibly happy news for Polish children this week. The new centrist coalition of Donald Tusk has passed a law that strictly limits the amount of homework that schools can give to children. Happy children.
K: Yes! Very happy children, I imagine.
D: And this is even more exciting, and a Happy Ending first: I sent out our producer Wojciech to do some real, actual, on the ground reporting this week about our Happy Ending story. Wojciech got out his microphone in Warsaw and interviewed his eight year old son Jaś, who is in first grade, and therefore is one of the beneficiaries of the new homework ban. Under the new rules, kids in grades one to three actually are not allowed to get any homework at all. So Jaś’s life after school is going to change quite drastically. For kids in grades four to eight, homework is now optional and doesn't count towards grades. Anyway, here is Wojciech interviewing Jaś at home in Warsaw.
[SOUND CLIP]
D: Wojciech asks, did you like doing homework?
[SOUND CLIP]
D: Of course not.
[SOUND CLIP]
D: Because I think that at home, you should rest and play with your parents. And it's at school where you should learn.
[SOUND CLIP]
D: Tell me. What do you think about Minister Nowacka introducing this homework ban?
[SOUND CLIP]
D: Now here, Jasiek is making a very nuanced point. He's saying that it's good for him because he doesn't like homework, but that he thinks it should have been discussed with the parents of the children because some might want homework for their kids.
K: What a considerate child!
D: Right?! And it's quite a common criticism of the anti-homework bill from Tusk’s government, which was brought in very quickly after the election without much consultation of teachers or parents. And I think it's quite impressive that Jaś is willing to admit that the process of the bill could have gone smoother, even if he is personally thrilled with the homework ban.
K: Oh my god, he’s so cute.
D: Anyway, back to Jasiek and Wojciech for the end of the interview. Do you think there should be no homework for any subject? Well, maybe not for English, because children need to speak English. And if they don't do homework for English, they won't learn? No, it's not like that. But I just love my English classes. Oh, and do you like homework for English? A bit less.
K: He's so cute. Oh my god.
D: Thank you so much, Wojciech and Jaś, for your very nuanced take on this somewhat controversial homework ban. It certainly cheered me up.
* * *
K: We've got an excellent interview coming up for you in next week's podcast, listeners. It is the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the single day that ended four decades of dictatorship, an epic piece of history that I'm ashamed to say I didn't know very much about until this interview. Don't miss it. In the meantime, for that sweet fix of European miscellanea in between episodes, you can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads and Mastodon. The links are in the show notes.
D: This week's episode was produced by Kats Laszlo, thank you so much Katz.
K: She also did the interview. She's putting us out of a job Dominic.
D: I'm very happy for someone else to do the producing, always.
K: Long may it continue. Thanks so much Katz and thank you to Wojciech for mixing and mastering. Thank you also toJaś for joining us for this week's happy ending, and thank you to you for listening!
D: Adieu!
K: Hejdå!