Legal summary
April 2026
F.B. and Others v. the Netherlands - 28157/18, 55021/19, 55483/19 et al.
Judgment 21.4.2026 [Section IV]
Article 3
Degrading punishment
Inhuman punishment
New mandatory ex officio mechanism of executive review of life-sentences after twenty‑eight years of detention: no violation
Facts – In response, inter alia, to the Court’s judgments in Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC] and Murray v. the Netherlands [GC], on 1 March 2017 a mechanism for reviewing the execution of life sentences was introduced in the Netherlands with a view to complying with Article 3 of the Convention. Under the Advisory Board Life-Sentence Prisoners Decree (“the Advisory Board Decree”) as originally in force, the responsible Minister had to review ex officio the possibility of a pardon after twenty-seven years of a life‑sentence prisoner’s detention, counted from the time they were first taken into police custody or held in pre-trial detention for the offences for which their life sentences were imposed. On 1 July 2023 a legislative amendment entered into force increasing that period to twenty-eight years. Additionally, pursuant to the Advisory Board Decree, twenty-five years after the start of a life‑sentence prisoner’s detention the newly established Advisory Board Life-Sentence Prisoners (“the Advisory Board”) had to issue an opinion to the responsible Minister on the prisoner’s admission to a reintegration phase during which they would be eligible to have access to reintegration activities in preparation for possible release.
The applicants are all serving life sentences imposed by the Court of Appeal between 2015-2018 following their convictions for various criminal offences. The applicants’ appeals on points of law were dismissed by the Supreme Court which held as a result of the entry into force of the Advisory Board Decree and other implementing legislation, Dutch law now provided for a system of review on the basis of which, in appropriate cases, a life sentence may be reduced, so that the imposition of a life sentence was not in itself incompatible with Article 3. It also held that their life sentences could not be considered de facto irreducible given their circumstances.
Law – Article 3:
(1) Preliminary remarks – In Murray the Court had examined the merits of the complaint about life imprisonment on the basis of the facts and circumstances which had existed at the time the applicant had lodged his application with the Court. That general principle did not prevent it from considering subsequent developments in law and practice in as much as they had a bearing on the question whether an applicant’s life sentence was – and remained – de jure and de facto reducible. Accordingly, the Court examined the applicants’ complaint in the light of the situation that had obtained on the date of their applications and later developments in law and practice, in particular the 2023 legislative amendment.
(2) System of review –
(a) Nature and scope of review – The Court had previously held that an executive review was not in itself contrary to the requirements of Article 3, as long as it was surrounded by sufficient procedural guarantees. Under Dutch law a decision whether to grant a pardon had to be taken by the responsible Minister, either in response to a request by a life-sentence prisoner or acting ex officio, and reasons had to be given in the event of refusal or an ex officio negative decision. Judicial review by a civil court was open to the life-sentence prisoners in case of a refusal to admit them to the reintegration phase or to grant a pardon. Life-sentence prisoners were able to actively participate in those judicial proceedings for the review of their life sentence, in which a court had to adopt a reasoned ruling, against which an appeal might subsequently be lodged with a higher court. That review contained sufficient procedural guarantees, since both a life prisoner and his or her lawyer had a right to be present in the courtroom to plead that the life prisoner had reformed. The same applied to proceedings regarding interim decisions that were open to challenge before the Complaints Commission and the Appeals Board of the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Juvenile Protection.
In civil review proceedings the courts would examine only whether the Minister had taken a decision in a reasonable manner and whether he or she could reasonably have taken the impugned decision in the light of the interests at stake; they did not have the power to release prisoners. In that connection, the Court was mindful that in Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom [GC] it had found “a significant judicial safeguard” in the fact that executive decisions had been subject to full judicial review and courts had had the power to release prisoners, and the system was found to be compatible with Article 3. However, that consideration did not imply that such a standard of review was a minimum requirement for a State to meet its obligation to provide life-sentence prisoners with a realistic prospect of release. What was required from States was that the review entailed either the executive giving reasons or judicial review, so that the appearance of arbitrariness was avoided. Similarly, the Court had held in Murray that to the extent necessary for the prisoner to know what he or she must do to be considered for release and under what conditions, it might be required that reasons be provided, and that that should be safeguarded by access to judicial review. In the present cases, the pardon system involved reasoned decision-making by the executive, combined with the possibility of judicial review.
According to the statistical data provided towards the end of 2024, three life-sentence prisoners had been admitted to the reintegration phase on the basis of an opinion issued by the Advisory Board, and one life-sentence prisoner had been pardoned in 2023 under the system put in place by the Advisory Board Decree. It could not therefore be said that life imprisonment in the Netherlands was never reduced in practice. The lack of much practice under the new system was unsurprising, given the fact that it had been in place only since 2017. That did not necessarily count against the domestic system, just as it did not count against other national systems which had been found to be in conformity with Article 3 where there had been reference to little or even no previous practice. Thus, at present it could not be said that statistical data showed only negligible prospects of release, or that pardon would always be an isolated exception.
(b) Criteria and conditions for review – The basis of a review of a life sentence had to extend to assessing whether there were legitimate penological grounds (punishment, deterrence, public protection and rehabilitation) for the continuing incarceration of the prisoner. The balance between them was not necessarily static and might shift in the course of a sentence, so that the primary justification for detention at the outset might not be so after a lengthy period of service of sentence. The requisite review had to take account of the progress that the prisoner had made towards rehabilitation, which had to be examined in the light of the applicable prison regime and conditions of detention, including physical and mental health aspects.
The review criteria laid down in the Advisory Board Decree were publicly accessible and the applicants could be expected to be familiar with them, thus increasing the transparency of the pardon procedure and constituting a guarantee contributing to consistency in the exercise of the Minister’s powers in that respect. The Court considered that the review criteria – namely the risk of reoffending, the risk of offending, the behaviour and development of the life-sentence prisoner during detention, and the impact on victims and next of kin and, in that context, the matter of retribution – adequately reflected the legitimate penological grounds as recognised in its case-law. The applicable criteria were objective and sufficiently clear, even if their application in individual cases could not be predicted beforehand with absolute certainty. It did not appear that the review criteria presented a partial picture of the decision-making process, nor that they were based solely on compassionate and/or exceptional grounds.
Additionally, during the first twenty-five years of their detention, life-sentence prisoners were given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, for instance through work and education. In order to address any risk of reoffending, and unless the life-sentence prisoner objected, a Murray assessment was to be carried out in the first year after the life sentence became final, and an assessment by the Pieter Baan Centrum no later than six months before the Advisory Board issued an opinion on the prisoner’s admission to the reintegration phase. The emphasis on retribution, combined with meaningful daytime activities during the first twenty-five years of detention, followed by reintegration activities and leave for eligible detainees, fell well within the State’s margin of appreciation and was not in violation of its positive obligations under Article 3.
(c) Time frame for review – The Court had previously observed in its case-law that there was clear support for the institution of a dedicated mechanism guaranteeing a review no later than twenty-five years after the imposition of a life sentence. At the time the applicants had lodged their applications, the responsible Minister had to take a review decision ex officio after twenty-seven years of detention, counted from the time they were first taken into police custody or held in pre-trial detention for the relevant offences. When that period had been increased to twenty-eight years in 2023 it still counted from the start of detention on remand. Having regard to the years in which the applicants’ life sentences had been imposed and the point in time when the Minister would take an ex officio decision, the applicants’ life sentences would be reviewed no later than twenty-five years after their imposition by the relevant appellate criminal court. Accordingly, that time frame for review fell within the respondent State’s margin of appreciation and did not exceed any of the thresholds identified in the Court’s case-law. The Court had no grounds to conclude that the applicable time frame as set out in the Advisory Board Decree was incompatible with the requirements of Article 3.
(3) Individual situations – The Court examined the individual situations of the applicants and found that they were not incompatible with Article 3. In that context it noted, inter alia, that as the first Murray assessments had started in 2020 it would be unrealistic and too rigid an approach to expect the authorities to ensure that a place at the Netherlands Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology was immediately available for all eligible life-sentenced prisoners, without some form of catch-up operation. For reasons linked to the efficient management of public funds, a certain friction between available and required capacity was inevitable and had to be regarded as acceptable.
(4) Conclusion – In view of the above, the Court considered that the domestic authorities had set up a system for the review of life sentences which enabled the applicants to know what they had to do to be considered for release, and under what conditions a review of their sentences would take place. Moreover, the applicants’ life sentences could not be regarded as irreducible, either de jure or de facto, given their individual circumstances. The circumstances in which life-sentence prisoners might seek release, with reference to the legitimate penological grounds for detention, could be further specified through procedural refinement, domestic case-law and practice. The constitutional obligation on national courts to take into account both Article 3 and the Court’s case-law as it might develop in the future provided an important additional safeguard to ensure continued compliance with the Convention.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
(See Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], 66069/09 et al., 9 July 2013, Legal Summary; Bodein v. France, 40014/10, 13 November 2014, Legal Summary; Murray v. the Netherlands [GC], 10511/10, 26 April 2016, Legal Summary; Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom [GC], 57592/08, 17 January 2017, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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