Normal as Usual? Human Rights in Times of covid-19

When we started drafting this editorial note, the coronavirus had not yet become a global threat. Our initial plan was to use this note to remind readers of the 50th anniversary in December 2019 of Greece’s withdrawal from the Council of Europe. Withdrawing was a means for the dictators who ruled Greece at that time to avoid the embarrassment of the impending expulsion of Greece from the Council of Europe in the aftermath of the emblematic Greek case.1 We would then connect the dots between this instance in the history of the Council of Europe and the recent emergence of illiberal democracies in Europe. Our ambition was to ask how the Council of Europe can rise to this new challenge and use its multifaceted apparatus effectively to react and possibly to sanction this alarming phenomenon. The two thought-provoking guest editorial notes by Professor Wolfgang Benedek and Judge Ineta Ziemele that we have the privilege to publish in this issue treat this question in some detail. The pandemic obliged us essentially to rewrite this editorial note. Evidently, this is a truly minor inconvenience compared with the impact that the pandemic has had – and continues to have – on people’s everyday lives or on the global economy, and with the feeling of vulnerability and fragility with which covid-19 has endowed humanity. Emergencies call for extraordinary measures. Inevitably, such measures interfere with human rights. Some of these interferences are direct, thus also easier to recognise. For instance, lockdown policies clash with and restrict a number of fundamental liberties. Other types