University of Cologne

Economic, social and cultural rights still lead a shadowy existence compared to classic civil and political rights. Although the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) predominantly belong to the latter category, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) also rules on applications essentially based on social rights. This is due to the fact that it interprets the ECHR in a way enabling it to protect social rights as well. This is well-demonstrated by the ECtHR’s jurisprudence on the protection of social benefits by way of the protection of property in Article 1 of the Additional Protocol to the ECHR (A1P1).

A highly controversial judgment from 2016 was also based on the protection of property under A1P1. In Béláné Nagy v. Hungary, the ECtHR found a violation of A1P1 in the withdrawal of a disability pension, even though the applicant did not meet the conditions for receiving it under domestic law. In doing so, the ECtHR threw overboard one of the central prerequisites of property protection of social benefits, namely the requirement of the
fulfilment of the conditions for the receipt of a benefit under national law. Has the ECtHR thus created a self-standing human right to social benefits?

The judgment gives rise to a comprehensive examination of the ECHR's potential for the protection of social benefits. Beyond A1P1, the study also takes other ECHR guarantees into account in order to draw a holistic picture. This analysis and critique is contrasted with the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) and the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG), that are called upon to interpret the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) and the Basic Law (GG), respectively, and have developed their own approaches to the protection of social benefits. Among other things, the focus is on the fundamental right to a minimum subsistence level arising from Article 1 (1) of the Basic Law in conjunction with the welfare state principle of Article 20 (1) of the Basic Law. Thus, the research study aims to provide a detailed picture of the fundamental rights protection of social benefits in ECHR, CFR and GG.