“Public Seminar by Dr Vladislava Stoyanova, Ragnar Söderberg Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden.

Against the backdrop of the rich judicial output of the Strasbourg Court, the case law under Article 4 (slavery, servitude, forced labour and human trafficking) of the European Convention on Human Rights is scarce. This is more than surprising against the backdrop of ample empirical evidence showing that migrants are subjected to severe forms of exploitation in Europe. To be more precise, the existing judgments in which the Court has dealt with abuses inflicted by non-state actors (e.g. employers) reaching the level of severity of Article 4 are eight, the latest one delivered on 30 March 2017, Chowdury and Others v. Greece, and involving exploitation of 42 Bangladeshi migrants on a strawberry farm. All the other seven cases (Siliadin v. France, Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, CN. and V. v. France, C.N. v. the United Kingdom, M. and Others v. Italy and Bulgaria, L.E. v. Greece and J. and Others v. Austria) reviewed by the Court also involve migrants.

In my presentation (based on my book Human Trafficking and Slavery Reconsidered ) I will assess the significance of the above mentioned judgments for the rights of migrants and I will suggest some prospective developments in the future case law under Article 4.”