(Bloomberg) -- The Swiss government pushed back against claims that it’s failing to protect its citizens from climate change, five months after Europe’s top human-rights tribunal chastised the country’s inaction in a landmark ruling.
“The federal council is of the opinion that Switzerland meets the climate policy requirements of the judgment,” the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
A group of elderly Swiss women won a landmark ruling in April before the European Court of Human Rights which sided with their claim that Switzerland hadn’t done enough to shield its resident from the ravages of climate change. The court ruled by a margin of 16 to one that the Switzerland “had failed to comply with its duties” concerning climate change, and so violated the right of the elderly women to respect for private and family life.
The case has assumed outsized importance because decisions by the court are binding across all 46 member states of the Council of Europe — superceding national courts. However, lawmakers in Switzerland had already urged their government to ignore the decision, saying it saw no reason to act given “previous and ongoing climate policy efforts meet the human-rights requirements of the ruling,” according to the bill passed by both houses of parliament.
A poll by newspaper Tages-Anzeiger had previously found that some 56% of the population think the court overstepped its mandate with the decision and that the country shouldn’t act on it.
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