The Economic and Political Influence Exerted By Private Foundations on Cases Taken By NGOs to the European Court of Human Rights, the European Committee of Social Right and the European Court of Justice

Due to austerity policies and measures endorsed by European institutions and governments leading to substantial public spending cuts, National Human Rights Structures (such as ombudsmen, human rights commissions and equality bodies) responsible for gathering complaints have seen their resources reduced. In the same way, NGOs which lodge complaints with the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice, and certain unions and NGOs taking their cases before the European Committee of Social Rights have also been faced with a substantial decrease in their funding. For these reasons, many NGOs active in the protection of human rights, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, Interights, etc. seem to have become increasingly dependent for their funding on private foundations. However, these foundations pursue economic, political and judicial objectives that are not always completely compliant with the full respect of fundamental rights. In the same manner, these foundations try to push the European courts to increase their effectiveness in condemning certain countries and specific fields of human rights. While scant attention has been paid by scholars to this phenomenon, this dependency of NGOs on “economic finance” might have a deep impact on concentrating and orientating applications towards specific domains that could both influence the lobby and the judicial actions undertaken by NGOs and the judicial activities of the European Courts. This phenomenon could therefore seriously compromise the right to make complaints to the European Courts for certain citizens.