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
FERNANDEZ IRADI v. FRANCE ■ Application no. 23421/21
Prisoner suffering from multiple sclerosis kept in detention; medical care identified by domestic courts as conditioning the compatibility of the applicant’s continued detention with his state of health not provided by the domestic authorities; finding of a violation not requiring the applicant’s detention to be terminated: violation of Article 3 (joint concurring opinion of Judges Felici, Zünd and Sârcu; concurring opinion of Judge Gnatovskyy; dissenting opinion of Judge Elósegui).
EMRE v. TÜRKİYE ■ Application no. 2412/21
Rejection of a prisoners’ request to be transferred to a prison closer to his family’s place of residence; refusal not based on an individualised assessment: violation of Article 8.
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
FERNANDEZ IRADI v. FRANCE ■ Application no. 23421/21 ■ Fifth Section ■ 4 December 2025
Art 3 ■ Prisoner suffering from multiple sclerosis ■ Lack of access to medical care, which, according to the domestic courts, determines the compatibility of the applicant’s continued detention with his state of health ■ Domestic courts emphasised that it was incumbent upon the competent authorities to ensure that the medical treatment recommended by the expert was entirely feasible ■ Finding of a violation of Article 3 in the circumstances of the case, not requiring the applicant’s detention to be terminated.
Facts ■ The applicant had been detained since 2003 and was sentenced in 2008 and 2009 to three prison sentences of thirty years, fifteen years and thirty years, as well as a permanent ban from French territory, for terrorist offences. In 2012, his sentences were reduced to the legal maximum of thirty years’ imprisonment, with a minimum term of twenty years.
In December 2012, he was found to suffer from multiple sclerosis. In March 2013, the applicant lodged an application before the Sentence Enforcement Tribunal for a suspension of sentence on medical grounds. Two medical assessments carried out in March and October 2013 concluded that the applicant’s state of health required daily care and a multidisciplinary medical environment and that this condition was permanently incompatible with his continued detention. The judgment of the Sentence Enforcement Tribunal, which ordered the suspension of the applicant’s sentence on medical grounds (with specific conditions), was annulled on 30 October 2014 by the Sentence Enforcement Chamber within the competent Appeal Court, who ordered a new medical opinion.
In February 2015, two medical experts recommended weekly physiotherapy treatment, in line with the recommendations of the National Health Authority, as well as a regular follow-up (including annual neurological consultations as well as additional specialist consultations depending on the symptoms observed). They considered that this medical care was compatible with the applicant’s continued detention, given that there was an outpatient consultation unit at the prison, which was connected to various networks of specialists. Based on this expertise and on the assessment they made of the medical care provided, the competent domestic courts rejected the applicant’s request for a suspension of sentence.
In April 2018, the applicant lodged another application for a suspension of sentence on medical grounds, following new examinations showing an aggravation of his state of health, showing “suboptimal efficacy of the background treatment administered” to date (§ 15). An expert report submitted in March 2019 confirmed that the applicant required second-line treatment, and provided specific guidance (weekly physiotherapy treatment, annual neurological consultations, urological care, treatment in a specialist medical department one day per month).
In June 2019, the management of the prison issued a favourable opinion on the applicant’s request for a suspension of sentence after finding that it was impossible to implement the new treatment recommended in that institution or in any other prison. In November 2019, the Sentence Enforcement Tribunal ordered the suspension of the sentence. On 27 February 2020, the Sentence Enforcement Chamber overturned the first instance judgment, considering that the expert’s essential medical recommendations had been implemented or could be implemented in the future.
In October 2022, the applicant was transferred to Spain to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Law ■ Article 3
General principles: Mouisel v. France, no. 67263/01, § 40, 21 March 2002; Enea v. Italy [GC], no. 74912/01, §§ 57-59, 17 September 2009; Blokhin v. Russia [GC], no. 47152/06, § 136, 23 mars 2016; Dorneanu v. Romania, no. 55089/13, § 80, 28 November 2017; Rozhkov v. Russia, no. 64140/00, § 104, 19 July 2007; Helhal v. France, no. 10401/12, § 48, 19 February 2015; Stanev v. Bulgaria [GC], no. 36760/06, § 204, 17 January 2012; Rooman v. Belgium [GC], no. 18052/11, § 143, 31 January 2019.
In the case at hand, the Court declared that it “intends to limit its review […] to verifying whether the respondent State has complied with the positive obligations imposed on it by domestic courts under Article 3 of the Convention” (§ 68). It based its review on the judgment of 27 February 2020 handed down by the Sentence Enforcement Chamber, in which it rejected the applicant’s request to suspend his sentence on medical grounds, considering that the applicant’s continued detention was possible if the medical and paramedical care recommended by the 31 March 2019 expert were implemented. The Chamber referred in particular to: the continued follow-up by the prison’s medical unit; the measures taken to guarantee the applicant’s access to second line treatment; the necessity to effectively provide the applicant with the recommended physiotherapy treatment; the possibility for the applicant to benefit from psychological counselling.
The Court saw “no reason to depart from the assessment of the [Sentence Enforcement Chamber], which was better placed than it to assess the care that the applicant needed and the possibilities that the French system could offer him, comparable to the level of care guaranteed to the entire population living in France” (§ 63). It focused instead on examining whether the elements identified by the Sentence Enforcement Chamber have been implemented by the authorities.
First, the Court noted that no second line treatment was established before 2022, when the applicant was transferred to Spain. However, it considered that the failure to implement the treatment was the result of the applicant’s reluctance to undergo it on two occasions (November 2019, March 2022) and that it cannot therefore be attributed to the national authorities. Second, the Court observed that, although the medical opinion recommended annual neurological monitoring, no such monitoring was organised between November 2019 and March 2022. Third, the Court noted that, contrary to the recommendations made by the medical experts and the Sentence Enforcement Chamber, the applicant was not provided with weekly physiotherapy treatment, at least until the beginning of 2022. The applicant did not request psychological care.
The Court concluded therefore that the applicant was not effectively provided with the medical treatment prescribed both by the medical experts and subsequently by the Sentence Enforcement Chamber, and considered as determining the compatibility of the applicant’s continued detention with his state of health.
However, the Court stressed that the finding of a violation “cannot be regarded, in the circumstances of the case, as requiring an end to the applicant’s detention, noting that he did not request psychological care and refused second-line treatment, without the case file showing that his state of health had clearly deteriorated as a result” (§ 71).
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 3.
Article 41 ■ EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; EUR 11,840 in respect of costs and expenses.
EMRE v. TÜRKİYE ■ Application no. 2412/21 ■ Second Section ■ 16 December 2025
Art 8 ■ Rejection of applicant’s request to be transferred to a prison closer to his family’s place of residence ■ Absence of individualised balancing of interests at stake while taking account of the applicant’s personal circumstances ■ Interference not “necessary in a democratic society”.
Facts ■ The applicant had been detained (first on remand and then following conviction) since July 2016 in Kırşehir E-Type Penitentiary Institution on grounds of membership of an organisation referred to by the Turkish authorities as FETÖ/PDY (“Fetullahist Terror Organisation/Parallel State Structure”) and was serving his prison term in Kırşehir E-Type Penitentiary Institution.
On 8 October 2018, he submitted a request to the Directorate General for Prisons to be transferred to a prison closer to the city of Edirne, where his wife and two school-aged children were residing. To support his request, he argued that his family had to travel almost 1,000 kilometres (i.e. forty to forty-five hours by bus with two connections) to visit him in Kırşehir. The applicant offered to pay the transfer fees. He also listed the prisons to which he could be transferred, either in Edirne or in the neighbouring cities.
On 19 October, the Directorate General for Prisons rejected his request, on the grounds that the institutions to which he had requested to be transferred were at full capacity and not suitable for him on account of the type of offence of which he had been convicted.
The applicant’s applications against this decision before the domestic court were unsuccessful.
Law ■ Article 8
(1) Admissibility
The Court rejected the Government’s objection that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies as he had not brought a claim in the administrative courts. It noted that the domestic courts rejected the applicant’s complaints on the merits and did not declare that they had no jurisdiction in respect of the issue at stake. The Court further noted that the Constitutional Court found the applicant’s application to be inadmissible as being manifestly ill-founded and not for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. The Court concluded that “it would be unduly formalistic to require an applicant to avail himself or herself of a remedy which even the highest court of the country had not obliged him or her to use” (§ 22, referring to D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic [GC], no. 57325/00, §§ 116‑18, 13 November 2007).
The Court also rejected the Government’s objection that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies, since it had failed to properly submit his application to the Constitutional Court. The Government stressed that the Constitutional Court rejected the applicant’s application on the grounds that he had failed to comply with the obligation to provide evidence and explanations in support of his complaints. The Court disagreed with the Constitutional Court’s assessment and considered that the applicant had “communicated all the relevant facts and made sufficiently reasoned complaints to enable the Constitutional Court to examine his allegation of a violation of his right to respect for family life” (§ 23 – the applicant provided an explanation as to why and how the distance between his place of detention and his family’s place of residence adversely affected his family life and provided a summary of all acts adopted in the frame of the related proceedings). The Court further noted that the Constitutional Court did not specify what further elements were required from the applicant to substantiate his complaint. It concluded that the Constitutional Court’s approach “amounted to an excessively formalistic application of procedural rules and created a disproportionate obstacle to the effective exercise of the right of individual petition” (ibid.).
2) Merits
General principles: Avşar and Tekin v. Turkey, nos. 19302/09 and 49089/12, §§ 68-74, 17 September 2019; İlerde and Others v. Türkiye, nos. 35614/19 and 10 others, §§ 212-15, 5 December 2023; Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev v. Russia, nos. 11082/06 and 13772/05, §§ 837 and 850, 25 July 2013.
The Court considered that the detention of the applicant in a prison facility located almost 1,000 kilometres from his family’s city of residence, combined with the considerable difficulties the latter faced in travelling to the prison, amounted to an interference with the applicant’s family life. It accepted that the interference had a legal basis and pursed a legitimate aim.
However, the Court considered that the authorities rejected the applicant’s request to be transferred to a prison closer to his family’s residence solely on the grounds that other prisons located closer to Edirne were at full capacity and the prisons were not suitable for him on account of the type of offence for which he had been convicted, without carrying out an individualized assessment to take into account the applicant’s personal circumstances – including the difficulties faced by his family to visit him, and “notably” his children (§ 35). Neither did the authorities examine whether any alternative means of making up for the fewer visits he received would be possible (e.g. longer visits, longer telephone calls).
Consequently, the Court concluded that interference was disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and therefore was not necessary in a democratic society.
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 8.
Article 41 ■ No claim within the time-limit set by the Court.
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Funded by the European Union and the Robert Carr Fund. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, the European Commission or the Robert Carr Fund. The European Union, the European Commission and the Robert Carr Fund cannot be held responsible for them.
