Another Brick in the Wall of KlimaSeniorinnen: The Committee of Ministers’ September 2025 Monitoring Decision

1. Introduction

It has been more than a year since the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its groundbreaking climate judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. In this case, brought by a group of older Swiss women, the ECtHR established two violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – both on substance (Article 8 ECHR) and procedure (Article 6 ECHR). Its findings under Article 8, confirming that States have positive obligations under human rights law to regulate, and effectively mitigate, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with the goal of reaching global carbon neutrality in the next three decades, attracted extensive public, political, and academic attention. The KlimaSeniorinnen judgment was soon followed by authoritative guidance from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas (ITLOS), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), who issued a trifecta of advisory opinions confirming that States have stringent or enhanced obligations – under human rights law, and international law, more broadly – to reduce GHG emissions.

Among these, KlimaSeniorinnen stands out as the only contentious case, and thus the only one to generate binding findings and to give rise to monitoring and implementation procedures. As a result, the case is far from over and was passed to the Committee of Ministers (CoM) for supervision of implementation. The supervision procedure is especially “juicy” in this case, as all branches of the Swiss Government, i.e., its legislature, executive, and judiciary, voiced opposition to the judgment – each in their own form and with their own rationale. After Switzerland’s failed attempt to secure a quick closure of supervision during the CoM’s first review in March 2025, attention shifted to the September 2025 supervision meeting. Many expected that the CoM would press for strict compliance.  Yet rather than reinforcing the ECtHR’s ruling, the CoM’s recent decision gives the impression of retreating from it, thereby risking that the Court’s climate jurisprudence will be hollowed out at the implementation stage. This post examines these recent developments, with particular attention to the 18 September 2025 CoM decision, and the shortcomings of its review.

2. The execution procedure to date

Like all final ECtHR judgments, its April 2024 ruling in KlimaSeniorinnen is binding for the respondent State (Art. 46 ECHR), triggering CoM supervision of execution. The CoM, composed of government representatives from the 46 Member States of the Council of Europe (CoE), received Switzerland’s first submission – a mere “action report” rather than a more detailed “action plan” indicating the specific and general measures to be taken – on 8 October 2024. The Swiss government took the position that legislative changes initiated in the meantime – most of which in fact were enacted before the judgment was issued and merely entered into force thereafter – sufficed to comply with its ECHR obligations in the face of climate change.

In its first decision of 6 March 2025, the CoM, acting through the Ministers’ Deputies, rejected this position. It found that while Switzerland had paid out the costs and expenses award, further information was required to evaluate its progress on general measures. In particular, it highlighted the need for a methodologically transparent framework, quantification of remaining emissions (through a carbon budget or otherwise), and clarification of access to justice.

On 18 September 2025, the second decision of the CoM, acting through the Ministers’ Deputies, was published. Preceding this meeting, the CoM had received communications from the Swiss NHRI, the UN Special Rapporteur on climate change, the applicants in the case, a group of NGOs, and the Swiss government. The Swiss government, for its part, submitted written and graphical information on legislative steps taken since early 2024, presented a “carbon budget” that it considered “implicit” in existing regulation, emphasized its NDC commitments, and argued that it could feasibly reduce its GHG emissions by 90% by 2050, relying on negative emissions technology for the remaining 10% needed to reach net zero. It also alleged that its NDC was more ambitious than that recommended in the Paris Agreement’s first Global Stocktake, although without factoring in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR-RC). In addition, this reasoning is based on a false comparison: the Global Stocktake concluded that a 60% reduction in GHG emissions is required by 2035, compared to 2019 levels, to keep global warming to 1.5°C. The second Swiss NDC aims for a -65% reduction by 2035, but compared to 1990 levels, which official data shows to be less ambitious.

By contrast, the applicants in the case argued in their submissions to the CoM that the Swiss measures remained ineffective and insufficient: they lacked concrete measures, high-emitting sectors of industry remained largely unregulated, consumption-based emissions continued to be ignored, and emissions had actually increased in 2023. The Swiss NHRI, in its own submission, argued that Switzerland had simply listed the emissions expected under its current climate strategy, and had not provided a carbon budget that quantifies remaining Swiss emissions within the remaining global carbon budget – as clearly demanded by the Court’s judgment (para. 550). It emphasized that fairness and equity, including the principle of CBDR-RC, had been sidelined.

These positions fed into the CoM’s 18 September 2025 decision. In departure from the CoE’s previous approach, the COM for the first time declared Switzerland’s actions sufficient to be considered in compliance with the respective aspects of the judgment. It welcomed Switzerland’s adoption “of a comprehensive legislative and regulatory framework at federal level setting out the goals, targets and timetable for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050” (para. 5) and accepted that quantification had taken place. The CoM also invited Switzerland to set up “an independent national body suited to the national political structure to monitor its climate policy” to ensure effective implementation of objectives and measures. It decided to continue its examination of this issue, and of issues related to access to justice, but found that there was no further supervision needed as regards certain aspects of the judgment, namely adaptation measures and procedural safeguards (para. 6).  

3. Shortcomings of the 18 September 2025 decision

The CoM’s stance is deeply concerning. By conflating what Switzerland plans to emit with what it is permitted to emit, the Swiss government’s approach reduces the exercise of quantification to a projection of business-as-desired. This is akin to calculating a budget by extrapolating from spending habits rather than from the actual funds available – or from the obligations to share those funds fairly with others. The result is a “budget” in name only: one that reflects Switzerland’s preferences and political feasibility, rather than the physical limits of the atmosphere or the normative limits articulated by the Court.

Instead of countering this position, the 18 September decision takes a minimalistic understanding of the mitigation obligation set up by the Court in the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment and represents a sharp departure from the Court’s reasoning. The Court had demanded robust general measures: clear timelines, quantifications, intermediate reduction targets, science-based target-setting, and compliance mechanisms (para. 550). In applying these standards to Switzerland, it noted that Switzerland’s strategy already exceeded what an equal per capita approach would allow (para. 569), that NDCs were no replacement for carbon budgets (para. 571), and underlined the need to honor the principles of CBDR-RC and equity (para. 571).

None of these findings is reflected in the CoM’s decision. Instead, the CoM effectively endorsed the Swiss government’s position that any declaratory label of “quantification” suffices, regardless of whether it is fair, adequate, or scientifically aligned with the Paris temperature limit. This minimalistic review is troubling. No genuinely new mitigation goals or measures have been adopted since the judgment. Most of the legislative changes invoked by Switzerland had already been assessed by the Court, which happened to merely enter into force after the judgment – in some instances following alleged deliberate delay. Swiss climate law and policy still avoid a transparent, science-based quantification of remaining emissions, place undue reliance on reductions abroad, and lean heavily on speculative future technologies. Taken together, these shortcomings leave serious doubts about the credibility of Switzerland’s implementation efforts. Yet the CoM treated these issues with little substantive engagement, creating tension with the narrow margin of appreciation the Court recognized regarding climate aims and objectives, which are undermined by this approach (para. 543 of the judgment, as well as the discussion below).

For a case like this one – historic, much-watched, and sending a signal to jurisdictions far and wide about the need to take state obligations to mitigate climate change seriously – the CoM’s superficial review is highly problematic. Because it neither takes the normative parameters of the ruling seriously, nor engages with the substance of the Swiss measures, it risks hollowing out the impact of the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment itself.

4. The larger problem: Dangerous signals and symbolic policy-making

Domestic resistance to this case has been fierce. Swiss politicians and courts alike have criticized the ECtHR, with proposals in Parliament even calling to curtail the Court’s “intrusive case law.” These echoes of broader pushback against Strasbourg, reminiscent of the recent letter by nine governments on migration, send troubling signals to the CoE: push too far, and expect retaliation.

Research shows such political pressure can constrain the Court’s development of case-law. In KlimaSeniorinnen, such resistance seems to have had a different effect: it secured a green light for the Swiss government’s still-minimal efforts at climate mitigation and regulation – at the expense of effective human rights protection. This is troubling not only because of the direct consequences for this case, but also because of the broader message it sends. If the Court’s jurisprudence can be hollowed out at the implementation stage, this not only exposes the tensions between legal proceedings and politically charged supervision but also threatens the effectiveness of the Strasbourg system as a whole.

Overall, it is important to note that the ICJ, in its (albeit non-binding) climate advisory opinion, set out a more substantive standard of review. It found that States have limited discretion in preparing their NDCs, and that they have an obligation of due diligence to ensure that these same NDCs, cumulatively, can achieve the 1.5-degree temperature target of the Paris Agreement (para. 245). The CoM’s “approval” of the Swiss “budget” not only minimizes the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment’s guidance but also ignores the standard of care established by the ICJ. This means that, given its planned emissions, Switzerland is theoretically exposing itself to the risk of state responsibility.

5. What’s next?

This criticism notwithstanding, supervision of mitigation measures is not yet closed. The CoM invited Switzerland to submit another report for evaluation in 2026. Because the issues that remain to be monitored have been narrowed by the most recent decision, it can be expected that the submissions made in this context will concern the concretization and implementation of the Swiss carbon budget, a review of climate performance, the creation of independent monitoring mechanisms, and the requirements surrounding participation and procedural rights (including under Article 6 ECHR, where it is clear from follow-up proceedings that domestic practice has not shifted). Whether the CoM will meaningfully engage with these issues, or continue its deferential stance, will determine whether KlimaSeniorinnen becomes a milestone in climate litigation – or another brick in the wall of stalled implementation.