March 11, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A new report from the European Centre for Law & Justice (ECLJ) has shown that numerous judges at Europe’s top court, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), have previously worked closely either with George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) or for another NGO funded by the OSF. In the past 10 years, these judges have sat on at least 88 cases where their former NGO was involved.
“When we looked more closely at the background of the judges of the ECHR, we never imagined the troubling discoveries we would make,” writes Grégor Puppinck, leader of the ECLJ.
“We have identified seven NGOs that are both active at the Court, and have judges among their former staff. At least 22 of the 100 judges who have served since 2009 are former staff or leaders of these seven NGOs,” Puppinck continues.
“Among these, the Open Society Foundation stands out for the number of judges linked to it (12) and for the fact that it actually funds the other six organisations identified in this report.”
The OSF is just one of the means utilized by billionaire Soros to push left-wing causes throughout Europe, throughout the United States, and around the world, including abortion, euthanasia, population control, same-sex “marriage,” transgenderism, and more. The OSF spends $940 million annually in 100 different countries, including $150 million per year funding the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the leading abortion company Planned Parenthood, and other liberal groups.
The organization claims to support humanitarian and democratic initiatives around the world but also is documented fomenting social discord — for example, by puppeteering globalist politicians, provoking riots, and pouring money into abortion groups.
It also uses a well developed network of NGOs to advance Soros’s agenda all over the world, with the OSF funding more than 60 NGOs in Soros’s native Hungary alone and a number of organizations that are active at the ECHR.
As well as the 12 ECHR judges who are linked directly to the OSF, seven others have previously worked with the Helsinki Committees; five with the International Commission of Jurists; three with Amnesty International; and one each with Human Rights Watch, Interights, and the A.I.R.E. Centre.
All of those NGOs are funded in part by the OSF, who say themselves that their relationship with groups they fund is not merely financial, but aims at developing “alliances in pursuing crucial parts of the open society agenda.” The ECLJ’s report claims that some of these NGOs are so financially dependent on the OSF that it is “quite artificial to distinguish them from it.”
“The judges who had responsibilities within these NGOs cannot ignore these links,” the report asserts.
“The powerful presence of the Open Society and its affiliates is problematic in many ways,” Puppinck states. “But even more serious is the fact that 18 of the 22 judges were found to have served on cases initiated or supported by the organization with which they were previously associated.”
The ECLJ’s report notes the “exceptional and political power” of the ECHR and the crucial role that NGOs play at the European court.
“The case-law of the ECHR is authoritative within the 47 [European] Member States, and inspires many instances beyond Europe,” the report explains.
According to the report, the strategy of ideological NGOs at the ECHR is to “obtain the condemnation of national practices or laws contrary to the interests or values of the organization” and claims that “[t]his strategic action has been particularly effective in promoting the rights of LGBT people in Europe.”
In a blog post for the European Journal of International Law, Puppinck highlights the case of current Bulgarian judge, Mr. Yonko Grozev.
He was previously the founding member of the Helsinki Committee of Bulgaria (1992–2013), as well as a member of the board of the Open Society Institute of Sofia (2001–2004) and then of the Open Society Justice Initiative (New-York) from 2011 until his election at the Court. In this capacity, he brought several cases before the ECtHR, such as the famous one of the “Pussy Riot” (Mariya Alekhina and Others v. Russia, no. 38004/12, 17 July 2018) which was still pending when he eventually became a judge in April 2015.
Puppinck notes that Grozev then adjudicated cases introduced in 2014 and 2015 by the Helsinki Committee of Bulgaria.
“There is no doubt that such [a] situation raises an issue of impartiality and that the judge should have withdrawn. In another case, still pending, he sat while the Open Society Justice Initiative intervened as a third party in the case (see the proceedings before the Grand Chamber of Big Brother Watch and Others v. United-Kingdom, n° 58170/13),” Puppinck states.
Puppinck noted that “18 out of the 22 judges concerned had the same behaviour” while stressing that the issue was not that Judge Grozev had exhibited genuine bias toward one of the parties, “but that the appearance of such bias can be said to exist.”
The report explains that one reason for the high proportion of judges coming from NGOs is that judges at the ECHR are not required to have judicial experience. The report notes that 51 of the 100 judges at the Court for the last ten years are not magistrates by profession and that of the 22 judges having links with the Soros-funded NGOs, 14 are not professional magistrates.
“One may wonder how a professional activist can, overnight, adopt the forma mentis of a magistrate,” the report observes.
Puppinck says that the 88 problematic cases over the last 10 years identified in the report is a low assessment because it doesn’t take into account the close financial links between NGOs.
“For example, we did not identify all cases involving other NGOs funded by the Open Society Foundation, nor did we identify all cases in which a judge from an NGO funded by OSF ruled in cases in which that foundation acted,” he noted.
The ECLJ has launched a petition calling on the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to initiate an investigation and for the situation to be remedied by avoiding the appointment of activists as judges and placing on existing judges an obligation to withdraw from cases that present a conflict of interest.