A Right to Access to Emergency Health Care: The European Court of Human Rights Pushes the Envelope

Abstract

This article argues that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) seems to have recently acknowledged that there is a right to access to emergency health care in the member states of the Council of Europe. The Chamber of the ECtHR found that a state’s failure to design a regulatory framework that guarantees access to health care in emergency situations violates the substantial limb of Article 2 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that protects the right to life. It is argued that the newly established requirements seem to be reasonable but that there seem to be no sufficient safeguards to ensure that the ECtHR does not substitute its own assessment for that of medical professionals.