In 2025, of 646 applications against France dealt with by the European Court of Human Rights, only 27 were decided by judgment. What happens to the others? And how do you explain to a litigant that a case which has weighed on their whole life may stop at Strasbourg’s door?
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Of every hundred cases that litigants bring to me with a view to applying to Strasbourg, in about ninety I have to tell them that their application risks being declared inadmissible and that I will not be able to take it to the Court. That is a rough estimate drawn from my practice. Behind that figure there is often a difficult conversation with someone who has already devoted several years to their case and who believed, in good faith, that they had done everything that could be expected of them.
I can understand why this person is challenging the decision. I may even share their concern about the way in which one element of the file was dealt with. But before suggesting that they lodge an application, I must be able to answer three questions. What precise interference with a right guaranteed by the Convention are they complaining of? At what stage were the French courts in a position to remedy it? And which document can prove it today? Where the file leaves one of these questions unanswered, the gravity of the case’s human consequences does not make the legal obstacle disappear.
In 2025, of the 646 applications against France that Strasbourg dealt with, 619, or 95.8%, were declared inadmissible or struck out. The other 27 resulted in 20 judgments, as several applications were examined together1. It would therefore be inaccurate to infer from this that 95.8% of French appeals on points of law followed by a European application fail. The figure also includes cases from the administrative courts. And among the strike-outs are cases in which the applicant was able to obtain redress through a friendly settlement.
What I find troubling, in my practice, are the cases in which an interference deserved to be argued but in which, after the final decision, I can no longer find the procedural trail that would allow it to be put effectively before Strasbourg. The official statistics do not say how many cases fall into that category. Nor do they support the conclusion that non-exhaustion is the leading ground of inadmissibility in applications against France. To understand how the possibility of recourse can be lost, we have to look inside a case file.
Take the case of a conviction based largely on an expert report. The client tells me: “The expert got it wrong, and I never had the data that would have allowed me to prove it.” That sentence contains two challenges. The first concerns the accuracy of the result. The second, the opportunity for the defence to verify the evidence used against it.
I will ask to see the written submissions filed on appeal. Did the defence request disclosure of the data? Did it explain which calculation it wanted to check and why the final report was not enough? If the judges refused, what reasons did they give for that refusal? I will then read the pleading filed with the Court of Cassation. Did it maintain that challenge, in a form that the Court of Cassation could examine? Or was it directed solely at an inconsistency in the figures relied on in the judgment?
In both scenarios, the client can say in all sincerity: “We challenged the expert report all the way to the Court of Cassation.” Yet the European case will be very different. In the first, the written submissions can establish that the French courts had the opportunity to remedy a breach of the principle of adversarial proceedings. In the second, it will have to be determined whether that complaint was actually raised in substance. One can have exhausted every level of jurisdiction without having exhausted domestic remedies for the specific complaint one wishes to bring to Strasbourg2.
This responsibility concerns all the lawyers involved in the case. The lawyer before the trial and appeal courts can ask for a document, have a refusal placed on record, explain what can no longer be verified and request a specific measure. The avocat aux Conseils (specialist counsel before the Court of Cassation and the Conseil d’État) can then identify, in the decision and the written submissions, the interference capable of supporting a ground of appeal on points of law. Later, the lawyer instructed after the appeal on points of law has been dismissed will be able to trace the request, the response and the consequence for the litigant. Each acts at a different stage, with different tools.
The Grand Chamber judgment in Fressoz and Roire v. France shows why it matters to read the grounds actually argued. Two journalists convicted following the publication of tax information complained of an interference with their freedom of expression. The French Government objected that they had not relied on Article 10 before the Court of Cassation. The Grand Chamber read their pleadings. It found in them the substance of their argument on the freedom to impart information and the public’s right to receive it. It dismissed the objection of non-exhaustion and went on to find a violation3. For practitioners, the lesson is precise: a clearly argued ground can preserve a complaint without citing the Article by number. Conversely, writing “Article 6” still says nothing about what the court was being asked to put right.
Another difficulty arises when every relevant remedy has indeed been pursued. The client wants the European judges to re-read the expert reports and choose the one he or she finds most convincing. But Strasbourg is not a court of fourth instance. The assessment of evidence is primarily a matter for the national courts. Under Article 6, the European Court examines, in particular, whether the proceedings, taken as a whole, were fair. It takes into account how a piece of evidence was obtained, presented and challenged. It may also intervene when faced with findings that are arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable. A reasoned disagreement about the weight of an expert report is not, on its own, enough to cross that threshold.
Finally, even where an arguable complaint has been preserved, there remain the four-month time-limit and the requirements of the application form. One must establish the applicable starting point, gather the relevant decisions and written submissions and send, in principle within that time-limit, a form complying with Rule 47 of the Rules of Court. A letter announcing that a complete file will follow is generally not enough to interrupt the running of the time-limit4. These are yet more reasons why a serious case may never result in a judgment.
When a client brings me their Court of Cassation judgment, the conversation often changes at the moment we find the page of written submissions on which they had asked, sometimes several years earlier, for the opportunity to challenge a piece of evidence. That page makes it possible to reconstruct what the court knew, what it could do and what it decided. That is what a lawyer can preserve for the client: the possibility that, after the last French judgment, someone can still meaningfully examine the European question. When that possibility is lacking and no arguable avenue remains, I prefer to tell the client so before they incur further costs.
Links to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights open the official text on HUDOC: in English where it exists, otherwise in French.
These notes are general information on Convention law; they do not constitute legal advice and do not create a lawyer-client relationship.
After the final decision of the highest national court, a case may be submitted to us directly, by the client or by their lawyer.