Overview of recent cases before the European Court of Human Rights and the European Committee of Social Rights (January – June 2026) ,

This case law report examines three cases before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and two collective complaints before the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR). The ECtHR judgments concern, respectively, the allegedly discriminatory application of a cap on welfare benefits to lone parents with very young children, the exclusion of a self-employed person from income compensation during temporary incapacity for work, and the unlawful discontinuation of an old-age pension. The ECSR decisions concern, respectively, Italy's prolonged failure to establish a complementary pension scheme for members of the Armed Forces and the Military Police, the delayed implementation of salary and pension harmonisation for national firefighters, as well as the failure to remedy inequalities affecting firefighters during the transitional period.