The judgment in G.K. and A.S. v. Switzerland, delivered by the European Court of Human Rights on 16 July 2026, addresses the issue of the Convention protection afforded to non-religious ethical beliefs in connection with requests for access to an entirely vegan diet. The two applicants were in situations of particular dependence on the public authorities: the first, G.K., was held in pre-trial detention; the second, A.S., had been admitted against his will to a psychiatric ward. Both had requested that the respective authorities provide them with a completely vegan diet, considering it necessary in order to bring their conduct into conformity with their ethical beliefs. The authorities responded to the requests by means of letters, without adopting formal decisions subject to appeal; the applicants’ subsequent attempts to obtain judicial review of their claims were declared inadmissible precisely on the ground that there was no appealable administrative decision.

The Court was therefore called upon to determine, first, whether the beliefs underlying the applicants’ requests fell within the scope of Article 9 of the Convention and, second, whether the applicants had had an effective domestic remedy within the meaning of Article 13 of the Convention.

In defining the scope of Article 9 of the Convention, the Court starts from the principle that freedom of thought and conscience constitutes one of the foundations of a democratic society and that the Convention provision protects both religious and non-religious beliefs. In this regard, particular importance attaches to the criterion developed in the Court’s previous case-law, according to which a belief must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance in order to fall within the notion of “beliefs” protected by Article 9 of the Convention. Applying these criteria to the case at hand, the Court observes that the Government had not disputed either the sincerity and consistency of the applicants’ vegan beliefs or the existence of a sufficiently close and direct link between those beliefs and their abstention from consuming animal products. The Court therefore considers that those beliefs met the threshold required under Article 9 and that the applicants’ complaints constituted arguable claims for the purposes of the Convention. It follows that adherence to a vegan diet, where it constitutes an expression of genuine and consistently held ethical beliefs, falls within the sphere of freedom of thought and conscience protected by that provision.

The Strasbourg Court does not therefore consider that veganism as such requires particular protection, but rather confirms a conception of Article 9 that is not confined to the religious dimension, encompassing also philosophical and ethical beliefs that assume sufficient significance in an individual’s conscience. In this respect, the judgment forms part of the broader function of Article 9 of the Convention as a safeguard of the plurality of beliefs existing in a democratic society. The Court regards veganism as a non-religious belief and recognises that its manifestation may benefit from Convention protection where the requirements established in its case-law are met.

The recognition of Convention protection does not, however, entail the existence of an unconditional right on the part of the applicants to obtain the requested accommodation. The Court places the matter within the framework of the positive obligations arising under Article 9 of the Convention. Where a person finds themselves, as in the present case, in a situation in which they are unable to procure independently food that is compatible with their beliefs, because they are detained or subject to involuntary psychiatric admission, the State bears a particular responsibility for making the manifestation of those beliefs practically possible. This obligation does not, however, mean that the authorities are necessarily required to grant every individual request: Article 9 of the Convention instead requires that the request be taken seriously and examined on its merits, carrying out, where necessary, a balancing exercise between the individual’s interest in conducting themselves in accordance with their beliefs and the competing interests of the administration. The Court emphasises that, in the present case, the authorities should have assessed whether the applicants’ requests were proportionate in light of the organisational, financial and practical constraints involved.

It is precisely in this respect that the Court finds a violation of Article 9. The issue therefore does not lie merely in the fact that the applicants had not received a fully vegan diet at all times and in all circumstances, but rather in the fact that their requests had never been the subject of a substantive examination capable of enabling such a balancing exercise to be carried out. The national authorities had not assessed in concrete terms whether, and to what extent, the organisational and practical requirements of the institutions concerned justified the manner in which the requests had been dealt with. The Court therefore concludes that the authorities had failed to comply with the positive obligation arising under Article 9 of the Convention to examine the applicants’ requests on their merits and to strike a fair balance between the competing interests.

The violation of Article 9 of the Convention thus found is closely intertwined with that of Article 13 of the Convention: both applicants had submitted requests concerning their diet to the respective authorities, but had received simple letters in response rather than formal decisions. Under domestic procedural law, administrative decisions could be challenged before the competent judicial authorities; however, in the absence of a formally adopted decision, the applicants were unable to obtain access to such judicial review. This circumstance is particularly relevant because the applicants had attempted precisely to obtain the decision necessary to challenge the administration’s position, but the authorities had considered either that they lacked a sufficient legal interest or that the communications they had received did not constitute appealable acts. The Court regards the application of the domestic rules as excessively formalistic, since it had the practical effect of preventing the applicants from having their complaints under Article 9 of the Convention examined on the merits. Article 13 of the Convention requires an effective remedy in practice, that is, one capable of enabling a competent national authority to examine an arguable claim of a violation of the Convention; in the present case, the application of the domestic rules had rendered such a remedy practically unavailable: the applicants had been unable to obtain the administrative decision necessary to trigger judicial review and, consequently, no national authority had ever examined their claims on the merits. The Court therefore concludes, by six votes to one, that there had been a violation of Article 13 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 9.

The judgment in G.K. and A.S. does not establish an absolute right to a vegan diet, but holds that, where a dietary practice constitutes the manifestation of a sufficiently serious and consistent non-religious ethical belief, the State cannot simply disregard it: it must examine the request in concreto, balance it against the competing interests and ensure that the individual has access to an effective remedy through which to challenge the administration’s response. It is in this transition from the recognition of a belief to its effective institutional consideration that the principal significance of the judgment for the protection of pluralism lies.

 

(Comment by Martina Palazzo)