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Suppose that the European Court of Human Rights qualifies a certain policy aim, such as the protection of the Member State's health system, as constituting a 'legitimate aim' in the context of Article 8 ECHR (Right to respect for private and family life).

  • Does this imply that this aim would also be found legitimate in cases arising under Article 14 ECHR (Protection from discrimination)?

  • Or are the 'legitimate aims' accepted under each of these provisions totally unrelated?

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  • Do you want to know if the legitimate aims are accepted as legitimate under all provisions, or do you really want to know if an alleged breach of rights can be justified in the same way? Commented Oct 24, 2022 at 13:47
  • I am not exactly sure I understand the difference, but maybe I am looking to find clues that the ECtHR will, once it has found that a certain infringement of one of the convention rights (e.g. right to family life) has a legitimate aim (e.g. protection of health system), it will rely on this finding in later cases relating to infringements of other convention rights (e.g. right to non-discrimination) to hold that these infringements also had a legitimate aim. Does this perhaps clarify my question? Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 2:31
  • The difference is that legitimate aim alone is not enough to justify infringements. Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 11:49

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Yes

I will implicitly assume you are asking about Article 14 in the context of an individual's Article 8 rights being engaged. Note that Article 8 rights being engaged does not mean they are breached. Engagement with Article 14 only requires that another Article's rights have been interfered with (see: Adulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v UK for an example of an Article 14 breach without an Article 8 breach).

While Article 8 explicitly lists legitimate aims in Article 8(2) that may justify an infringement of this right, Article 14 lists no such aims. On the surface, this may appear to suggest that Article 14 is an absolute right, but case law has established a symbiotic relationship between Article 14 and the other Convention rights. In the Belgian Linguistic Case (No2), the ECtHR clarified that Article 14 infringements require an examination of a) the pursuit of a legitimate aim, and b) the proportionality of the measure.

There is no definitive list of legitimate aims that allow for an individual's Article 14 rights to lawfully be engaged. This means that the question of what constitutes a legitimate aim under Article 14 is broader than the list of Article 8 aims. However, the same aims will certainly be applicable since they have already been identified as legitimate aims under Article 8.

However, the difference arises in the context of proportionality. Whether the infringement has a "reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be realised" will be considered separately for both Article 8 and Article 14 (Belgian Linguistic Case (No2)).

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