European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 179

November 2014

Vasilescu v. Belgium - 64682/12

Judgment 25.11.2014 [Section II] See: [2014] ECHR 1317

Article 46

General measures

Article 46-2

Execution of judgment

Respondent State required to take general measures to improve conditions of detention and to afford appropriate remedies

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Conditions of detention amounting to degrading and inhuman treatment: violation

Facts - The applicant complained before the European Court of the conditions in which he had been detained in various prisons in Belgium.

Law - Article 3: The applicant had been detained in overcrowded prison conditions and sometimes in cells with no toilet facilities or access to running water. He had also had to sleep on a mattress on the floor for several weeks and had been exposed to passive smoking. Accordingly, the applicant’s material conditions of detention in Antwerp and Merksplas prisons, taken as a whole, had reached the minimum threshold of seriousness required by Article 3 of the Convention and amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; claim in respect of pecuniary damage dismissed.

Article 46: The problems arising from prison overcrowding in Belgium, and the problems of unhygienic and dilapidated prisons, were structural in nature and did not concern the applicant’s personal situation alone. The conditions of detention about which the applicant had complained had been criticised by national and international observers for many years without any improvement apparently having been made in the prisons in which he had been detained. On the contrary, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) had observed in 2012 that the problem of prison overcrowding had continued to worsen in Belgium during recent years. Furthermore, none of the remedies referred to by the Government could at the present time be regarded as an effective remedy that had to be exhausted.

Accordingly, the Court recommended that the respondent State envisage adopting general measures in order to guarantee prisoners conditions of detention compatible with Article 3 of the Convention and also to provide them with a remedy capable of putting a stop to an alleged violation or permitting them to obtain an improvement in their conditions of detention.

(See also the Factsheet on Detention conditions and treatment of prisoners)

 

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