Petrache and Tranca v Italy (2016)

24 November 2017

The ERRC has been working with Italian NGOs and lawyers to support Roma who were living in a shelter only for Roma to bring litigation in the domestic courts in Italy complaining that the shelter was racially segregated.

After we became involved in that discrimination case, the people there were threatened with eviction from the shelter. We worked with our partners in Italy to ask the European Court of Human Rights to issue an interim measure (a kind of emergency order) to stop the eviction on behalf of two Romani women, a mother and daughter. The European Court gave the order, but then decided that the case was inadmissible. The Court reasoned that there were sufficient remedies available to the applicants in the domestic court. The general rule is that you cannot go to the European Court before you have used the remedies available at national level. We argued, unsuccessfully, that the remedies to stop the eviction were insufficient.

The domestic discrimination case is still pending before the Italian courts.

The Court’s decision declaring the case inadmissible can be found here (in French).

The arguments section of the application form can be found here.