Balancing of Human Rights and Economic Law in the European Court of Human Rights

The relationship between ECtHR case law relating to art. 1, Protocol 1, and the traditional principles of international law on foreign investments swings between a tendency to apply these principles, adapting them to the frame of reference of the Convention, and a tendency to overcome them.The first trend displays itself when the rights of property come to the fore viewed in its specific and traditional dimension, as a purely economic right; it concerns the notion itself of property, the “corporate veil” principle, the determination of the amount ofcompensation to be awarded in cases of expropriation.Instead, a clear tendency to overcome the traditional legal regime of foreign investments can be found when violations of other protected rights of considerable social (non-economic) interest come to the fore, together with interferences with the right of property. In such cases, the Court has tended both to extend the concept of property and to judge disproportionate these interferences, precisely in the light of the social relevance of the individual interests at stake.