Abstract This article examines what is analytically at stake when individuals claim that their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights have been interfered with and the respondent State invokes compliance with positive human rights obligations as the aim pursued through the interference. Such situations may be framed as revealing a tension between negative and positive obligations—a framing accepted by the Grand Chamber in the compulsory vaccination case of Vavřička v. Czech Republic. Drawing on the reasoning endorsed in that judgment, this article argues that no positive obligations were, in fact, at stake. By accepting the existence of a tension between obligations, the Court allowed general interests to operate under the façade of individual rights. While the State can and should protect general interests, such as public health, the coercive measures used in pursuing those interests are not commands that form the content of positive human rights obligations.
Vladislava Stoyanova (Fri,) studied this question.