This compilation brings together the most important judgments and decisions on prison issues handed down by the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union.
By reporting on the main trends in European prison case law, it aims to support legal practitioners in the prison field in their research and litigation, as well as to identify blind spots in European case law and to build strategic litigation avenues.
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
UKRAYINSKYY AND OTHERS v. UKRAINE ■ Applications nos. 48751/19 and 41 others
Article 37: Continued examination of the complaints despite the loss of contact with 37 out of 42 applicants due to specific circumstances of the case (touches upon the very essence of the system of individual petition, concerns a structural problem, and the wartime situation has complicated communication with the Court).
Prisoners questioned by prison officials about their applications and compelled to give oral or written statements withdrawing or undermining their applications; prisoners recognised as being in a vulnerable situation owing to the prison authorities’ exclusive control over them and their limited contact with the outside world; interviews carried out without procedural safeguards and without the presence of the applicants’ lawyers, whose presence could have provided a “counterbalance to [their] vulnerability and a safeguard against coercion”: violation of Article 34.
Poor detention conditions and lack of an effective remedy: violation of Article 3 and Article 13; no examination of the complaints under Article 8 (Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Serghides).
Article 41: Applicants’ claim for costs and expenses reduced by 30% on account of the manner in which their applications were submitted – grouped application containing a shared and generalised description of the facts and complaints (Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Serghides).
CEKIĆ v. SERBIA ■ Application no. 19083/20
Prisoner held in poor detention conditions: inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
Prisoner diagnosed with tuberculosis; no systematic screening for tuberculosis upon arrival in prison despite repeated CPT recommendations; applicant’s screening more than two years after admission to prison; absence of situation of tuberculosis outbreak at the relevant time; no poor detention conditions established; Court unable to conclude that the applicant contracted the disease in prison; prompt and effective treatment following diagnosis: no violation of Article 3 (substantive limb).
Shortcomings in domestic civil proceedings not considered of a sufficient gravity; expert medical report produced five years after the diagnosis of the disease; domestic courts relied primarily on a prison report not communicated to the Court; applicant’s request to obtain information regarding the prevalence of tuberculosis in the other prisons in which he had been detained rejected: no violation of Article 3 (procedural limb).
F.B. AND OTHERS v. THE NETHERLANDS ■ Applications nos. 28157/18 and 6 others
Mechanism of review of life-sentences after twenty‑eight years of detention, counted from the start of detention on remand; combination of decision-making by an executive authority and possibility of judicial review; mechanism found to offer sufficient procedural guarantees; review criteria publicly accessible, objective, sufficiently clear and adequately reflected the legitimate penological grounds: no violation of Article 3.
ANTONOV v. ESTONIA ■ Application no. 48721/22
Resetting of the starting date of the 25-year minimum term of a life sentence before a prisoner can be considered for early release to the date of the new criminal conviction for another offence; automatic and non-individualised application of that rule, regardless of the degree of severity of the new offence or the time that the person had already served in prison; period of time postponed from 25 years to 50 years after the applicant had been sentenced to life imprisonment and 52 years after he had entered prison; presidential clemency does not offer “prospect of release” owing to lack of procedural safeguards: violation of Article 3 (Joint Dissenting Opinion of Judges Đurović and Sancin).
SUMMARY JUDGMENTS
Hungary | Prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release on parole; mandatory pardon procedure available only after they have served 40 years of their life sentences; procedure lacking procedural safeguards (Éberling and Others v. Hungary, nos. 19002/20 and 6 others, 14 April 2026) : violation of Article 3 (Dissenting Opinion of Judge Pisani).
Ukraine | Life-sentenced prisoner deprived of clear and realistic prospects of early release (Tyshkovets v. Ukraine, no. 20661/23, 16 April 2026): violation of Article 3 for the period between the date of the applicants’ final sentencing to life imprisonment until 3 March 2023; no violation of Article 3 after that date.
Russia | Inadequate conditions of detention under strict imprisonment regime (Slepakov v. Russia, no. 57798/19, 30 April 2026): violation of Article 3.
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
UKRAYINSKYY AND OTHERS v. UKRAINE ■ Applications nos. 48751/19 and 41 others ■ Fifth Section ■ 2 April 2026
Art 37 ■ Continued examination of the complaints despite the loss of contact with 37 out of 42 applicants ■ Specific circumstances of the case, which touches upon the very essence of the system of individual petition and concerning a structural problem ■ Acknowledgment of the fact that the wartime situation has complicated communication with the Court.
Art 34 ■ Undue interference with the exercise of the right of individual application through questioning by prison officials about the applicants’ applications and compelling some of them to give oral or written statements.
Art 3 (substantive) ■ Degrading treatment ■ Inadequate conditions of detention
Art 13 (+Art 3) ■ Lack of effective domestic remedies.
Art 41 ■ Applicants’ claim for costs and expenses reduced by 30% on account of the manner in which their applications were submitted.
Facts ■ The 42 applicants were detained in Zhovti Vody Correctional Colony no. 26 (Dnipropetrovsk Region). In March 2019, following a visit carried out to the prison, the NGO “Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group” (KHPG) published a report with many photographs, documenting poor detention conditions. During a subsequent visit, KHPG, having informed prisoners that they could apply to the Court, collected authority forms signed by the applicants.
Between March and August 2020, following the communication by the Court of the applications to the Ukrainian Government, the prison administration organised meetings with the applicants concerning their complaints. During those meetings, some applicants made written or oral statements declaring that they had no complaints regarding their conditions of detention. The authorities drew up reports on each meeting with the applicants.
In November 2020, the representatives submitted statements to the Court from five applicants, indicating that they had been subjected to coercion by the prison authorities to withdraw their applications. The prison authorities subsequently re-interviewed those 5 applicants.
Law ■ Preliminary issue: continued examination of the applications
Despite having lost contact with 37 of the 42 applicants, the Court decided to continue the examination of their applications, owing to specific circumstances. First, it considered that the case had “a potential impact going beyond the individual situation of the applicants, as it touches upon the very essence of the system of individual petition […]” (§ 38). Not only did the applicants make arguable allegations of repeated pressure exerted on them to dissuade them from pursuing their applications before the Court, but those complaints concerned inadequate detention conditions, “a structural problem in Ukraine affecting thousands of actual and potential applicants” (ibid.).
Second, the Court found that there was an “exceptional combination of [the applications’] particular circumstances” (§ 39): the applicants might have been deterred from pursuing their complaints due to the pressure exerted on them, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “undoubtedly complicated communication”. The Court also noted that applicants reported “variations in the circumstances in which such pressure was allegedly exerted in respect of different applicants’ and found it important to examine “all types of pressure” (ibid.).
Law ■ Article 34
The Court accepted the applicants’ allegation that the meetings held by the prison administration aimed to induce them to withdraw their applications. The interviews conducted did not appear to result from a genuine effort by the authorities to improve the applicants’ situation, as permitted by Article 34. The Court noted that the authorities had been informed of the detention conditions in Zhovti Vody one year before the applications were communicated (through the KHPG report and letters written by prisoners). The Court also explained it could only “regard with suspicion” (§ 48) the fact that several applicants, after having lodged detailed and consistent complaints, subsequently indicated following interviews with the prison administration that they no longer had any complaints.
In response to the Government’s submission that they suspected the applications to result from an abusive practice, the Court reiterated that in such cases, “the sole appropriate course of action is […] to alert the Court and provide it with the available information so that the Court can draw the appropriate conclusions” (§ 51). Such suspicion cannot justify questioning applicants “outside any formal legal process […] and in the absence of adequate procedural safeguards” (§ 52).
Importantly, the Court gave particular weight to the applicants’ “vulnerability and their susceptibility to influence exerted by the authorities” (§ 53) as they remained “for an extended time under the exclusive control of the prison authorities and with only limited contact with the outside world” (ibid.). Whereas the prison officials who conducted the interviews “had at their disposal various means capable of aggravating the applicants’ situation”, the applicants’ lawyers “whose presence could have provided, to some extent, a counterbalance to that vulnerability and a safeguard against coercion, were neither invited nor notified” (ibid.).
Conclusion■ Violation of Article 34.
Law ■ Articles 3 and 14
The Court decided to examine all aspects of the applicants’ detention conditions under Article 3, even elements that constituted the grounds of their complaint under Article 8 (toilet facilities not properly separated from the rest of the cell). In his Partly Dissenting Opinion, Judge Serghides disagreed with this approach, alerting that “[s]uch a method of absorbing one right into another has no legal basis in the Convention and on the contrary, is not in line, inter alia, with the principles of the rule of law, effectiveness, indivisibility of rights and autonomy of rights, or with the purpose of an individual application under Article 34 of the Convention, which is the cornerstone of the Convention” (§ 8 of the Partly Dissenting Opinion).
As regards the applicants’ detention conditions as a whole, the Court regretted that the applicants, although detained in different cells and at different periods, “submitted a grouped application containing a shared and generalised description of the facts and complaints, without, for example, specifying the applicants’ cell numbers or the precise conditions therein”, which had “generated unnecessary work for both the Court and the respondent Government” (§ 68). Owing to the quality of the evidence provided, the Court did not find it justified the rejection of the applications as abusive.
However, it decided to reduce the applicants’ claim for costs and expenses by 30% for this reason (§ 85). Judge Serghides disagreed with this approach in his Partly Dissenting Opinion, finding it contradictory with the finding of a violation of Articles 3, 13 and 34 and the acknowledgment by the Court of the seriousness of the breaches established (see § 84). More broadly, he considered that, in such circumstances, this “punitive reduction of costs” incurred may have a “dissuasive effect on applicants seeking to assert their rights before the Court and is therefore difficult to reconcile with the spirit and purpose of the Convention system” (§ 19 of the Partly Dissenting Opinion).
The Court also declared that, owing to significant shortcomings in the Government’s submissions (contradictory information regarding the applicants’ detention, lack of information on the living space afforded to the applicants, communication of a large set of documents without accompanying list or page numbers and inadequately addressing the applicants’ allegations), it “cannot but rely, in certain respects, exclusively on the applicants’ account of the facts together with its own previous case-law in relation to Zhovti Vody Prison.” (§ 75).
Conclusion ■ Violation of Articles 3 and 13.
Article 41 ■ Between EUR 3,400 and 7,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; between EUR 140 and EUR 875 in respect of costs and expenses; Applicants’ claim for costs and expenses reduced by 30% on account of the manner in which their applications were submitted (Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Serghides).
CEKIĆ v. SERBIA ■ Application no. 19083/20 ■ Third Section ■ 7 April 2026
Art 3 (substantive and procedural) ■ Court unable to conclude based on the available material that the applicant contracted tuberculosis in prison, or that a concrete and proven risk of such infection was created by an omission attributable to the respondent State ■ Despite shortcomings in the preventive arrangements (lack of screening), there was no delay or deficiency in the medical response once the illness was suspected ■ Adequate and effective medical treatment ■ No situation of endemic or uncontrolled tuberculosis transmission at the relevant time ■ Adequate material conditions ■ Requisite threshold not attained ■ Shortcomings in civil proceedings did not prevent domestic courts from addressing the substance of the applicant’s allegations and insufficient to disclose a violation of Art 3.
Facts ■ The applicant started serving a prison sentence in May 2008 at Sremska Mitrovica prison. He complained of inadequate detention conditions when he was placed under the “enhanced supervision regime” and in solitary confinement (limited personal space, dirty and damp cells) at different periods between February and September 2009.
The applicant was admitted to the Belgrade prison hospital in November 2010. He was diagnosed there with tuberculosis in December 2010. He was kept at the prison hospital and was given antibiotic treatment against this disease until April 2011, when he was retransferred to the prison. He tested negative for tuberculosis in July and August 2011. He complained that he contracted the disease while in prison, and that his poor detention conditions while in solitary confinement and enhanced supervision had contributed to the onset of the disease. He also argued that he did not receive prompt and adequate medical treatment.
Law ■ Article 3
(1) Inadequate detention conditions
The Court rejected this part of the complaint as manifestly ill-founded as it found no evidence that his detention conditions (with regards to both personal space and general material conditions) amounted to a treatment incompatible with Article 3.
To reach this conclusion, it challenged the applicant’s claim that he had been held in the fourth wing of Sremska Mitrovica prison and considered instead that he had been detained in the prison’s third wing. It did not base this conclusion on the Government’s submission, which only mentioned that the applicant had been held in the “disciplinary department”. Instead, the Court relied on several reports (CPT, Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Serbian NPM) indicating that individuals in solitary confinement and under enhanced supervision were accommodated in the third wing.
As regards the applicant’s personal space: while the applicant claimed to have been detained with two other prisoners while under “enhanced supervision”, the Court noted that “the available reports indicated that the cells used for enhanced supervision in the third wing housed two prisoners […] and the case file contains no material capable of corroborating the applicant’s account” (§ 84). Considering it established that the applicant shared his cell with one other prisoner only, it considered that the cell’s dimension as reported in the CPT and NPM reports offered sufficient personal space for two persons.
As regards detention conditions: the Court noted that, according to the available reports, the third wing had been refurbished in 2006 and that it offered adequate detention conditions. The Court acknowledged that none of these reports covered 2009 but considered that the available material as a whole did not enable it to conclude that the applicant’s detention conditions had been contrary to Article 3.
The Court did not refer to the fact that, during domestic proceedings, domestic courts rejected the applicant’s request for an on-site inspection and expert opinion from a construction specialist to secure evidence of his detention conditions (§§ 14-16).
(2) Medical condition and treatment
The Court stressed at the outset that although “poor material conditions of detention may increase the risk of transmission or activation of airborne diseases such as tuberculosis” (§ 110), it had found that the applicant’s detention conditions had been adequate.
As regards the date on which the applicant contracted tuberculosis, the Court considered it established that there was no systematic screening of newly arrived prisoners for tuberculosis, despite “the CPT’s repeated recommendations that the Serbian authorities ensure comprehensive medical screening on admission, including appropriate screening for transmissible diseases such as tuberculosis” (§ 115). The Court also noted that the screening that led to the applicant’s diagnosis of tuberculosis took place two and half years after he was admitted to the prison (§ 114).
However, it considered that this circumstance alone is not “sufficient to justify a finding that the respondent State failed to comply with its positive obligations under Article 3 in the circumstances of the present case” (ibid.). It insisted that this case must be distinguished from other cases where the absence of tuberculosis screening upon arrival was found to be critical due to a context marked by a structural and acute prevalence of transmissible disease, coupled with aggravating factors, such as prison overcrowding (§ 118 referring i.a. to Jeladze v. Georgia, no. 1871/08, § 44, 18 December 2012 and Gladkiy v. Russia, no. 3242/03, § 87, 21 December 2010).
Furthermore, the Court noted that there was no evidence that he had been held together with detainees suffering from active tuberculosis and declared that it “cannot exclude the possibility that the applicant had been infected before the period on which his complaint is focused” (§ 116). The Court also observed that, as soon as the applicant presented tuberculosis symptoms, he was promptly isolated and treated in an effective manner.
Lastly, as regards procedural aspects, i.e. the obligation to elucidate the circumstances of the applicant’s infection with tuberculosis, the Court considered that the shortcomings identified in the related proceedings were not of sufficient gravity to disclose a violation of Article 3 (expert report produced five years after the disease was diagnosed, civil proceedings lasting for six years, domestic courts’ reliance on a prison report stating that no other prisoner in the prison had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2009 and not communicated during the proceedings before the Court, domestic courts’ refusal to produce evidence as to the prevalence of tuberculosis in the other prisons in which the applicant had been previously detained).
Conclusion ■ No violation of Article 3.
F.B. AND OTHERS v. THE NETHERLANDS ■ Applications nos. 28157/18 and 6 others ■ Fourth Section ■ 21 April 2026
This legal summary was prepared by the Court’s Registry.
Art 3 (substantive) ■ Life sentences reducible de jure under the new mandatory ex officio mechanism of executive review of life-sentences after twenty-eight years of detention in compliance with Art 3 ■ Review mechanism enabled the applicants to know what they must do to be considered for release and the conditions of review of their sentence ■ Review system involved reasoned decision-making by the executive combined with the possibility of judicial review ■ Sufficient procedural guarantees ■ Post-2017 statistical data did not show lack of reducibility of life-sentences in practice, that a life prisoner had negligible prospects of release or that pardon would always be an isolated exception ■ Review criteria publicly accessible, objective, sufficiently clear and adequately reflected the legitimate penological grounds as recognised in the Court’s case-law ■ Applicants’ life sentences will all be reviewed no later than twenty-five years after their imposition by the relevant appellate criminal court ■ Applicable time frame for review within the respondent State’s margin of appreciation and did not exceed any thresholds identified in the Court’s case-law ■ Applicants’ life sentences could not be regarded as de jure or de facto irreducible given their individual circumstances ■ Circumstances in which life-sentence prisoners might seek release, with reference to the legitimate penological grounds for detention, could be further specified through procedural refinement, domestic case-law and practice.
Facts ■ In response, inter alia, to the Court’s judgments in Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC] and Murray v. the Netherlands [GC], on 1 March 2017 a mechanism for reviewing the execution of life sentences was introduced in the Netherlands with a view to complying with Article 3 of the Convention.
Under the Advisory Board Life-Sentence Prisoners Decree (“the Advisory Board Decree”) as originally in force, the responsible Minister had to review ex officio the possibility of a pardon after twenty-seven years of a life‑sentence prisoner’s detention, counted from the time they were first taken into police custody or held in pre-trial detention for the offences for which their life sentences were imposed. On 1 July 2023 a legislative amendment entered into force increasing that period to twenty-eight years. Additionally, pursuant to the Advisory Board Decree, twenty-five years after the start of a life‑sentence prisoner’s detention the newly established Advisory Board Life-Sentence Prisoners (“the Advisory Board”) had to issue an opinion to the responsible Minister on the prisoner’s admission to a reintegration phase during which they would be eligible to have access to reintegration activities in preparation for possible release.
The applicants are all serving life sentences imposed by the Court of Appeal between 2015-2018 following their convictions for various criminal offences. The applicants’ appeals on points of law were dismissed by the Supreme Court which held as a result of the entry into force of the Advisory Board Decree and other implementing legislation, Dutch law now provided for a system of review on the basis of which, in appropriate cases, a life sentence may be reduced, so that the imposition of a life sentence was not in itself incompatible with Article 3. It also held that their life sentences could not be considered de facto irreducible given their circumstances.
Law ■ Article 3
(1) Preliminary remarks
In Murray the Court had examined the merits of the complaint about life imprisonment on the basis of the facts and circumstances which had existed at the time the applicant had lodged his application with the Court. That general principle did not prevent it from considering subsequent developments in law and practice in as much as they had a bearing on the question whether an applicant’s life sentence was – and remained – de jure and de facto reducible. Accordingly, the Court examined the applicants’ complaint in the light of the situation that had obtained on the date of their applications and later developments in law and practice, in particular the 2023 legislative amendment.
(2) System of review
(a) Nature and scope of review
The Court had previously held that an executive review was not in itself contrary to the requirements of Article 3, as long as it was surrounded by sufficient procedural guarantees. Under Dutch law a decision whether to grant a pardon had to be taken by the responsible Minister, either in response to a request by a life-sentence prisoner or acting ex officio,and reasons had to be given in the event of refusal or an ex officio negative decision.
Judicial review by a civil court was open to the life-sentence prisoners in case of a refusal to admit them to the reintegration phase or to grant a pardon.Life-sentence prisoners were able to actively participate in those judicial proceedings for the review of their life sentence, in which a court had to adopt a reasoned ruling, against which an appeal might subsequently be lodged with a higher court. That review contained sufficient procedural guarantees, since both a life prisoner and his or her lawyer had a right to be present in the courtroom to plead that the life prisoner had reformed. The same applied to proceedings regarding interim decisions that were open to challenge before the Complaints Commission and the Appeals Board of the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Juvenile Protection.
In civil review proceedings the courts would examine only whether the Minister had taken a decision in a reasonable manner and whether he or she could reasonably have taken the impugned decision in the light of the interests at stake; they did not have the power to release prisoners.
In that connection, the Court was mindful that in Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom [GC] it had found “a significant judicial safeguard” in the fact that executive decisions had been subject to full judicial review and courts had had the power to release prisoners, and the system was found to be compatible with Article 3.
However, that consideration did not imply that such a standard of review was a minimum requirement for a State to meet its obligation to provide life-sentence prisoners with a realistic prospect of release. What was required from States was that the review entailed either the executive giving reasons or judicial review, so that the appearance of arbitrariness was avoided.
Similarly, the Court had held in Murray that to the extent necessary for the prisoner to know what he or she must do to be considered for release and under what conditions, it might be required that reasons be provided, and that that should be safeguarded by access to judicial review. In the present cases, the pardon system involved reasoned decision-making by the executive, combined with the possibility of judicial review.
According to the statistical data provided towards the end of 2024, three life-sentence prisoners had been admitted to the reintegration phase on the basis of an opinion issued by the Advisory Board, and one life-sentence prisoner had been pardoned in 2023 under the system put in place by the Advisory Board Decree. It could not therefore be said that life imprisonment in the Netherlands was never reduced in practice.
The lack of much practice under the new system was unsurprising, given the fact that it had been in place only since 2017. That did not necessarily count against the domestic system, just as it did not count against other national systems which had been found to be in conformity with Article 3 where there had been reference to little or even no previous practice. Thus, at present it could not be said that statistical data showed only negligible prospects of release, or that pardon would always be an isolated exception.
(b) Criteria and conditions for review
The basis of a review of a life sentence had to extend to assessing whether there were legitimate penological grounds (punishment, deterrence, public protection and rehabilitation) for the continuing incarceration of the prisoner.
The balance between them was not necessarily static and might shift in the course of a sentence, so that the primary justification for detention at the outset might not be so after a lengthy period of service of sentence. The requisite review had to take account of the progress that the prisoner had made towards rehabilitation, which had to be examined in the light of the applicable prison regime and conditions of detention, including physical and mental health aspects.
The review criteria laid down in the Advisory Board Decree were publicly accessible and the applicants could be expected to be familiar with them, thus increasing the transparency of the pardon procedure and constituting a guarantee contributing to consistency in the exercise of the Minister’s powers in that respect.
The Court considered that the review criteria – namely the risk of reoffending, the risk of offending, the behaviour and development of the life-sentence prisoner during detention, and the impact on victims and next of kin and, in that context, the matter of retribution – adequately reflected the legitimate penological grounds as recognised in its case-law. The applicable criteria were objective and sufficiently clear, even if their application in individual cases could not be predicted beforehand with absolute certainty. It did not appear that the review criteria presented a partial picture of the decision-making process, nor that they were based solely on compassionate and/or exceptional grounds.
Additionally, during the first twenty-five years of their detention, life-sentence prisoners were given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, for instance through work and education. In order to address any risk of reoffending, and unless the life-sentence prisoner objected, a Murray assessment was to be carried out in the first year after the life sentence became final, and an assessment by the Pieter Baan Centrum no later than six months before the Advisory Board issued an opinion on the prisoner’s admission to the reintegration phase.
The emphasis on retribution, combined with meaningful daytime activities during the first twenty-five years of detention, followed by reintegration activities and leave for eligible detainees, fell well within the State’s margin of appreciation and was not in violation of its positive obligations under Article 3.
(c) Time frame for review
The Court had previously observed in its case-law that there was clear support for the institution of a dedicated mechanism guaranteeing a review no later than twenty-five years after the imposition of a life sentence.
At the time the applicants had lodged their applications, the responsible Minister had to take a review decision ex officio after twenty-seven years of detention, counted from the time they were first taken into police custody or held in pre-trial detention for the relevant offences. When that period had been increased to twenty-eight years in 2023 it still counted from the start of detention on remand.
Having regard to the years in which the applicants’ life sentences had been imposed and the point in time when the Minister would take an ex officio decision, the applicants’ life sentences would be reviewed no later than twenty-five years after their imposition by the relevant appellate criminal court.
Accordingly, that time frame for review fell within the respondent State’s margin of appreciation and did not exceed any of the thresholds identified in the Court’s case-law. TheCourt had no grounds to conclude that the applicable time frame as set out in the Advisory Board Decree was incompatible with the requirements of Article 3.
(3) Individual situations
The Court examined the individual situations of the applicants and found that they were not incompatible with Article 3. In that context it noted, inter alia, that as the first Murray assessments had started in 2020 it would be unrealistic and too rigid an approach to expect the authorities to ensure that a place at the Netherlands Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology was immediately available for all eligible life-sentenced prisoners, without some form of catch-up operation. For reasons linked to the efficient management of public funds, a certain friction between available and required capacity was inevitable and had to be regarded as acceptable.
(4) Conclusion
In view of the above, the Court considered that the domestic authorities had set up a system for the review of life sentences which enabled the applicants to know what they had to do to be considered for release, and under what conditions a review of their sentences would take place.
Moreover, the applicants’ life sentences could not be regarded as irreducible, either de jure or de facto, given their individual circumstances. The circumstances in which life-sentence prisoners might seek release, with reference to the legitimate penological grounds for detention, could be further specified through procedural refinement, domestic case-law and practice. The constitutional obligation on national courts to take into account both Article 3 and the Court’s case-law as it might develop in the future provided an important additional safeguard to ensure continued compliance with the Convention.
Conclusion ■ No violation of Article 3.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
ANTONOV v. ESTONIA ■ Application no. 48721/22 ■ Third Section ■ 28 April 2026
This legal summary was prepared by the Court’s Registry.
Art 3 (substantive) ■ Resetting of the starting date of the 25-year minimum term of the applicant’s life sentence to the date of his latest criminal conviction for new offence rendered his life sentence de facto irreducible ■ Life sentence to be reviewed 50 years after its imposition as a result of the domestic system for calculating aggregate sentences ■ Domestic courts’ diverse application of domestic law at different times with respect to the applicant’s new convictions, for offences committed while detained, rendered the mechanism of setting the starting date of an aggregate sentence confusing and unforeseeable ■ Presidential clemency procedure lacked relevant procedural safeguards and did not constitute a remedy corresponding to the notion of “prospect of release” ■ Impugned domestic mechanism unduly delayed life prisoners’ eligibility to seek review of their sentence ■ Rigid, automatic and non-individualised resetting of the 25-year minimum term regardless of the degree of severity of the offence committed, the corresponding punishment imposed, or the time already served by the life prisoner ■ Finding of a violation not to be understood as affording the applicant the prospect of imminent release
Facts ■ The applicant had been detained since 18 October 1994. He was convicted in May 1995 and May 1996 and sentenced to 15 years in prison on both occasions. He was convicted again in August 1996, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment. While serving that sentence, the applicant was convicted of three more criminal offences in 2004, 2013 and 2021 respectively.
In 2013 the domestic courts had set the starting date of his aggregate sentence as the date on which he had been sentenced in 2004. Both in 2004 and 2021 the starting date of his aggregate sentences had been reset to run from the date of his latest respective conviction.
In 2021 the first-instance court under Articles 64 § 4 and 65 § 2 of the Criminal Code, added the “unserved part” of the applicant’s previous life sentence to this latest sentence and, as an aggregate punishment, sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Consequently, the applicant was deemed to have started to serve the term of this aggregate punishment on the day of his conviction, that is 9 July 2021; the period from 18 October 1994 until 8 July 2021 was held to have been already served.
The applicant’s appeals seeking the setting aside of the first-instance judgment in so far as it concerned setting the starting date of serving his aggregate sentence were unsuccessful.
Law ■ Article 3
In the circumstances of the present case, the domestic legal framework for a review of a life sentence could not be equated with a situation of there not being any clear time frame for first sentence review at all. Nor could it be found that the initial 25-year minimum term that a life prisoner had to serve was too long from the outset; that term aligned with the international trend towards establishing a special mechanism guaranteeing a first sentence review no later than 25 years after the imposition of a life sentence.
However, under the domestic system for calculating aggregate sentences, although the applicant had been in prison since 1994 and had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996, his conviction for a further crime in 2021 – for which he had received a prison sentence of one year and three months – had set back to 2046 his first chance to have his life sentence reviewed.
Thus, the first time that he could apply to have his life sentence reviewed would be 50 years after being sentenced to life imprisonment and 52 years after being detained in prison.
The postponement of the possibility to apply for a review of his sentence had been attributable to his own behaviour. The applicant must have been aware that engaging in criminal behaviour while serving a life sentence could only serve to diminish his chances of early release from prison.
However, the domestic law did not only provide that the applicant’s criminal behaviour must be taken into account when deciding on his possible early release, it also mandated the resetting of the 25-year minimum term that the life prisoner had to serve before becoming eligible to be considered for early release.
According to the Supreme Court’s interpretation, the new starting date for the aggregate sentence (the sentence that combined the earlier life sentence and the sentence for the new offence) had to be the date of the latest court judgment by which the applicant had been convicted. That date, consequently, automatically appeared to serve as the starting date for calculating the 25-year minimum term to be served before the prisoner could have his life sentence subjected to review with a view to his early release. That system did not take any account of the time that a prisoner had already spent serving his or her life sentence; nor the nature and severity of the new criminal offence that he or she had committed while serving that sentence.
The period by which eligibility for consideration for early release was postponed was fixed at 25 years – regardless of the nature or the duration of the sentence received for the newly-committed offence. The applicant’s latest conviction had resulted in the review of his life sentence being postponed until 2046. In such circumstances the period for which a life prisoner had to wait before he or she could for the first time expect to be considered for early release was significantly longer than the maximum recommended time frame (established on the basis of a consensus in comparative and international law) after which the review of a life sentence should be guaranteed.
The instant case had given the Supreme Court its first opportunity to interpret and apply the relevant domestic law in respect of life prisoners. In fact, it had already, in 2015, stated that Article 65 § 2 of the Criminal Code was to be understood to mean that the starting date for serving a sentence could only be the date of the latest court judgment. Accordingly, it was not decisive that lower-instance courts had previously interpreted and applied the relevant provisions inconsistently. In the present case, the manner in which the Supreme Court had interpreted the relevant domestic law could not be considered arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable.
However, the domestic courts appeared to have applied the law in question differently at different times with respect to the applicant himself and his argument – challenging the manner in which the starting date of his sentence had been set in the domestic proceedings – had remained unaddressed. The domestic courts’ practice over the years with respect to the applicant must have therefore rendered the mechanism of setting the starting date of an aggregate sentence (and thereby also the starting date for the 25‑year term to be served in order to be considered for early release) confusing and unforeseeable for him.
As for the Government’s argument that the applicant could at any time lodge an application with the President for clemency, the Court noted that, in view of the lack of any relevant procedural safeguards, the presidential clemency procedure did not constitute a remedy that would correspond to the notion of “prospect of release”, as understood in its case-law.
In the light of the above, the domestic mechanism by which every new criminal conviction restarted the running of the 25-year period that a life prisoner had to serve before becoming eligible to seek a review of his sentence unduly delayed such a review. The rigid, automatic and non-individualised application of that rule, regardless of the degree of severity of the offence in question (or the corresponding punishment imposed) or the time that the person had already served in prison, was problematic.
Accordingly, the Court was not convinced that the applicant’s life sentence – which he had been serving since 1996 and in respect of which he would only be able to seek a review in 2046 at the earliest – could be regarded as de facto reducible for the purposes of Article 3.
In reaching that conclusion the Court noted that, in the course of the present proceedings, the applicant had not argued that, in his individual case, there were no longer any legitimate penological grounds for his continued detention. The finding of a violation under Article 3 could not therefore be understood as affording him the prospect of imminent release.
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 3 (Joint Dissenting Opinion of Judges Đurović and Sancin).
Article 41 ■ The finding of a violation constitutes in itself sufficient just satisfaction for any non-pecuniary damage.
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