Introduction

On 6 May 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on the case of L.F. and Others v. Italy (application no. 52854/18). The case concerned 153 Italian applicants who accused the State of failing to protect the environment and their health from pollution caused by the Pisano Foundry near Salerno, in the Irno River valley, Campania. The Court found a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (right to respect for private and family life) for 151 of them, residing within a six-kilometre radius of the foundry. However, the ECtHR rejected the claims regarding violations of Articles 2 (right to life) and 13 (right to an effective remedy). The conclusion highlights the current limitations of human rights judicial guarantee systems in addressing environmental damages affecting communities and related regulatory issues.

The Facts: Industrial Legacy and Urbanistic Disorder

The harmful environmental effects of the Pisano Foundry's activities had been known for decades. The industrial plant for ferrous metal smelting, which produces up to 300 tonnes of material per day, was established in 1960 in an area that was initially reserved for productive activities but where residential housing has multiplied over the years. The 2006 Municipal Urban Plan (PUC) recognised this fact, classifying it as a residential area and requiring the foundry to drastically limit its emissions or relocate production elsewhere whilst maintaining employment levels. Despite this, over the years, the industrial activity was regularly authorised, including in 2012 when the Campania Region issued the integrated environmental authorisation accompanied by a periodic monitoring plan and guidelines to improve the environmental impact of operations. Between 2015 and 2018, various inspections by the regional environmental agency (ARPAC) found deficiencies, but after some suspensions and multiple appeals to administrative justice, the environmental authorisation was nevertheless confirmed in 2020. Residents' associations (notably the Health and Life Association) challenged the Region's decision. Still, both the Regional Administrative Court and, in 2022, the Council of State rejected the request to revoke the company's authorisation. An epidemiological study conducted by regional health authorities, including the Experimental Zooprophylactic Institute of Southern Italy, the National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment "G. Pascale", and the National Institute of Health, analysed data from 400 individuals aged 20 to 49 out of approximately 9,000 residents. The results of the 2021 analysis revealed that the human body contained heavy metals at levels above average, potentially due to the company's emissions. The Council of State, however, in its judgement, observed that the link between the epidemiological data and the foundry's emissions was not definitively proven. As for the intense presence of housing in what should have been an industrial zone, the administrative judge merely considered it "quite surprising". In subsequent years, ARPAC continued to monitor the foundry's activity, finding various deficiencies, but not sufficient to justify a new suspension of production or to impose the relocation of the facilities.

Since the early 2000s, residents have repeatedly filed criminal complaints against the company for deficiencies in the treatment of special waste and harmful and foul-smelling emissions. The complaints resulted in modest monetary fines. A new criminal investigation, initiated in 2014, led to the acquittal of the company's executives due to a lack of irrefutable evidence of the foundry's polluting activity, finding that methodological errors had flawed ARPAC's analyses. A new criminal case was initiated in 2019. An initial expert report in 2021, which found air and water pollution, did not establish the foundry's responsibility. In the same year, another expert report analysed, among other things, the results of a longitudinal epidemiological study conducted between 2011 and 2017 on residents. The data showed that the population suffered from various diseases related to pollution. Still, it was difficult to distinguish which, among the various polluting sources present in the area (industrial emissions from various companies, traffic, presence of quarries, in a densely populated area), was the direct cause of the observed pathologies. The expert report noted that recent monitoring and judicial initiatives may have reduced the foundry's polluting emissions, but that the population continued to suffer from the cumulative effects of years of exposure to pollutants, with even fatal outcomes. Based on these conclusions, the Salerno prosecutor's office, in 2024, asked the preliminary investigations judge to dismiss the case. At the time of the ECtHR judgement, the judge had not yet decided.

The Court's Decision

The applicants asked the ECtHR to rule that, by allowing residential settlements in the foundry area and failing to define effective rules to prevent the release of harmful substances into the air and water, as well as failing to adopt adequate measures to reduce or eliminate the effects of such pollution on humans, the state had violated Articles 2 (right to life) and 8 (right to private and family life) of the ECHR.

The ECtHR, recalling its case law on pollution confined to a restricted area or caused by a single agent (among others, the cases of Guerra and Others v. Italy, no. 14967/89, 19 February 1998; Locascia and Others v. Italy, no. 35648/10, 19 October 2023, and Cordella and Others v. Italy, 54414/13 and 54264/15, 24 January 2019), decided not to address the alleged violation of the right to life, but to limit its analysis to Article 8 ECHR alone. The applicants also requested recognition of a breach of Article 13 ECHR (right to an effective remedy), but the ECtHR declared this claim manifestly unfounded.

Before addressing the merits of the case, the ECtHR rejected the inadmissibility issue raised by the State, which denied that the applicants could be considered victims of the ECHR violation and therefore considered the application a form of actio popularis, not allowed by the ECHR. The ECtHR responded that, in cases of this nature, the existence of a precise link between polluting emissions and pathologies affecting the applicants is the controversial issue on which the ECtHR is called to rule. Therefore, the uncertainty about the victim status does not transform the claim into an actio popularis. In any case, it is an undisputed fact that living within a six-kilometre radius of the foundry constitutes a risk to the quality of life and health of the applicants. Therefore, the application is admissible for all applicants, except two who reside beyond the six-kilometre zone identified by the expert reports. The government also contested the non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, stating that the Health and Life Association promoted the administrative proceedings initiated and concluded. However, individual residents can still initiate similar procedures. However, the ECtHR considers that, especially on environmental matters affecting diffuse interests, individuals generally protect themselves in court through associations and committees, and, indeed, the Italian courts had ascertained the Life and Health right to stand in court. Since the effective domestic remedies for the Health and Life Association have been exhausted, the application to the ECtHR is admissible.

On the merits, the ECtHR highlights the fact that since the 1960s, the area where the Pisano foundry operated has been affected by residential settlements, which should not have been allowed. In 2006, the municipality of Salerno recognised this situation and requested, among other things, the relocation of the company to another site. In reality, residential settlements did not stop, and the foundry was not relocated. As for the judicial decisions that do not recognise the causal link between polluting and malodorous emissions and the discomfort complained of by the applicants, on which the repeated operating authorisations issued by regional authorities in favour of the foundry were based, the ECtHR is struck by the fact that the cumulative impact, over several decades, of such emissions on the population of the Irno valley was never taken into consideration. The fact that the authorities considered the existence of unpleasant and potentially harmful emissions "physiological", given the proximity of the industry to houses and the obsolescence of the facilities, seems to prove, according to the ECtHR, that the State did not sufficiently consider the health and quality of life of the applicants and their families. The ECtHR therefore concludes that there has been a violation of Article 8 ECHR.

The applicants, in addition to a symbolic compensation of 20,000 euros each for non-pecuniary damage, asked the ECtHR to impose detailed measures on the State to remedy the situation recognised as contrary to the ECHR, issuing a pilot judgement, similarly to what had been done for the situation of the "Land of Fires" with the Cannavacciuolo judgement (Cannavacciuolo and Others v. Italy, Applications nos. 51567/14 and 3 others - see comment on this casee here). However, the ECtHR rejects these requests and considers that the State maintains its discretion in choosing the means to respond to the situation that has arisen, always under the supervision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, as provided for in Article 46 ECHR. As for compensation, the ECtHR considers that the recognition of the violation of Article 8 ECHR constitutes sufficient satisfaction for the applicants.

Judge Serghides added a partially dissenting opinion to the judgment. The judge agrees in finding a violation of Article 8 ECHR but believes that the ECtHR erred in rejecting as "inadmissible" the claim based on the violation of Article 2 ECHR. The two articles cannot be considered as relating to the same subject matter and deserve separate treatment. In this case, in particular, the available scientific data would probably have justified the recognition of the State's responsibility also for violation of Article 2. Judge Serghides also criticises the choice not to have granted the applicants compensation for the non-pecuniary damage they suffered, especially after having rightly highlighted in the judgement the long duration of their exposure to pollutants and the feelings of anxiety and concern with which they have lived for many years.

Conclusions

The Court's judgement seems to mark a distancing from the recent cases of Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz e altri c. Svizzera (Application no. 53600/20) and Cannavacciuolo and Others v. Italy, justified by the fact that the environmental issue appeared, in this case, more circumscribed both geographically and in terms of affected population, as well as for the subjects identified as polluters. However, the case brings to light not only significant regulatory deficiencies and failures on the part of the Italian authorities concerning the effective guarantee of the right to live in a healthy environment and urban management that avoids serious risks to residents' health, but also the lack of adequate sensitivity to these types of issues within the judicial apparatus, particularly in instances of administrative justice. The decisions made in this case have largely overlooked the profound dysfunctions of the local context, which are rooted in years of neglect for the environment and public health, underscoring a lack of attention to corporate social responsibility. The ECtHR, however, has also missed an opportunity to advance human rights jurisprudence on environmental health in Italy, as highlighted by Judge Serghides' partially dissenting opinion.