On 16 October, the Committee on the Rights of the Child published a Report holding France accountable for grave and systematic violations of the rights of unaccompanied migrant children. The Report marks yet another confrontation between the Committee’s findings and the French Conseil d’État, which in July declined again to engage with the Committee’s previous criticism of age-assessment procedures. France’s written observations to the Report, submitted in September, testified to its persistent deafness.

This tension exemplifies a broader and recurring question: what authority do UN Treaty Body (UNTB) pronouncements hold within domestic legal orders? Although the views, general comments and concluding observations of UNTBs are formally non-binding, they are designed to guide states in interpreting and implementing their treaty obligations. Yet, national courts across Europe respond to these interpretative pronouncements with striking variation. Some (claim to) engage in an open dialogue; others turn a deaf ear.

This post explores this spectrum of judicial receptiveness through a comparative lens. At one end lies France, where the silence of the Conseil d’État signals judicial resistance to external interpretive authority. At the other end stands Spain, whose Supreme Court has gone so far as to declare UNTB views binding, which remains an outlier in comparative practice. Other European national courts have taken positions somewhere in the middle. German courts have adopted a more balanced and principled approach. Dutch courts have by and large been less principled, but have attached more importance to UNTB output in some cases, possibly as a result of the monist Dutch constitutional tradition.

French Conseil d’État: silence despite clear condemnations

The Report followed an inquiry conducted under Article 13 of the Optional Protocol that had been initiated in early 2022 (para. 8). It highlights, i.a., the importance of the presumption of minority (para. 26) and notices that individuals assessed as adults during their initial age determination were treated as such throughout the entire procedure, which could last up to eight months. However, social services often refused to assist them because they considered them as minors, ultimately placing these individuals in a protection limbo (para. 26, 33). As both, children and migrants, they were particularly vulnerable and “caught between legislation protecting children and legislation aimed at combating illegal immigration” (para. 26).

Escalation had already been looming. The Committee on the Rights of the Child had on several occasions found France in violation of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In a view from 2024, it addressed the complaint of an unaccompanied minor who had been denied child protection measures despite having presented his official birth certificate (A.C. v. France para. 2.3 f.). The Committee concluded that France had failed to respect key procedural guarantees – particularly the presumption of minority pending age assessment (para. 8.11, 9b) – and thus breached several provisions of the CRC (para. 8.15). Similar cases are still pending.

Nevertheless, in July 2025, the Conseil d’État (France’s highest administrative court) rendered a judgment, upholding several provisions governing the treatment of unaccompanied migrant minors as lawful. It particularly held that age could not be inferred solely from identity documents (para. 11). While the court did cite both the CRC and the ECHR among the relevant legal instruments (para. 4 f.), it strikingly did not in any way engage with the Committee’s output. It merely stated that its views were not legally binding (para. 6). While one must admit that brevity is common for French judgments, this approach is rather disappointing in light of the clear stance that the CRC Committee had already taken on the French practice. Ultimately, France’s refusal to align with the Committee’s finding reflects a broader reluctance to recognise the authority of UNTBs.

Germany: selective referencing

In contrast to the Conseil d’État, the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) is regularly referring to UNTB pronouncements (see e.g. here at para. 171 for an engagement with the CRC Committee). Most recently, in the Ramstein judgment of July 2025, the FCC reaffirmed its earlier positions (see here at para. 90 and here at para. 65):

“The statements of human rights treaty bodies carry significant weight for the interpretation of the respective human rights treaties; however, they are not legally binding under international law for either international or national courts. In interpreting a treaty, a national court should engage with the views of the competent international treaty body in its reasoning, but it is not obliged to adopt them” (para. 107, unofficial translation by the authors).

While the FCC formally requires courts to engage with UNTB pronouncements, it provides no concrete guidance on what such engagement entails. In its own practice, the FCC tends to decide the case on its merits and only subsequently considers whether its conclusion aligns with international law. As a result, UNTB reasoning is rarely substantively incorporated into the FCC’s decisions but rather (if at all) quoted in passing. This ambiguity contrasts sharply with the treatment of ECtHR case law, which is generally considered to carry guiding authority with clearly defined limits (see here at para. 131 and here at para. 92). However, the German constitutional law provides no explanation regarding this different treatment.

Overall, the FCC’s approach to UNTBs appears highly selective. By briefly referring to the non-binding nature whenever it disagrees with them, and explicitly citing them whenever they support its own conclusions, the Court preserves a certain degree of discretionary flexibility. This reflects an understanding of openness to international law as a flexible argumentative framework, one that can be endowed with almost any normative content to support a desired conclusion. Nevertheless, this approach is undoubtedly more receptive to international human rights protection than the French practice of outright disregard discussed above.

The Netherlands: receptive selectivity

Dutch courts have relied on UNTBs views in a few instances as well, albeit their engagement with international bodies is considerably more extensive as in the German context. One of three highest administrative courts, the Central Appeals Tribunal, even adjusted its jurisprudence in line with the views of the HRC in Derksen v. the Netherlands, after recognising that the views are “an authoritative opinion” and have “special importance”. This means that national courts can only deviate from these views when justified by weighty reasons, which were found to be absent in this case. The Tribunal as well as various district courts followed this approach in relation to a (legally non-binding) Decision of the European Committee on Social Rights rendered vis-à-vis the Netherlands.

In contrast with the Dutch Central Appeals Tribunal or the FCC, the Dutch Supreme Court has never pronounced itself on the status of treaty body output from a more principled perspective. This, however, does not mean that it has not relied on the UNTBs’ views in several instances. Most recently, the Court quoted extensively from the views of the Human Rights Committee in Jaddoe v. the Netherlands. Jaddoe was acquitted at first instance and only convicted by the court of appeal, while the Supreme Court disposed of the case on the basis of a summary reasoning. The Human Rights Committee held that the Supreme Court had not sufficiently reviewed the facts and the evidence and, hence, deprived the accused of the effective exercise of his right to have his conviction and sentence reviewed by a higher tribunal as required by Article 14(5) ICCPR. While the Supreme Court disagreed with the Committee’s assumption that a substantive review had not taken place in summary reasoning cases, it extended its reasoning in its follow-up judgment and in other post-Jaddoe cases.

Note that other Dutch courts have been more reluctant to take into account concluding observations or general comments, except in specific decisions following (Dutch) complaints. The Supreme Court, for instance, refrained from referring to the Concluding Observations of the Committee monitoring the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which had recommended that the government take action against the reformed political party SGP for excluding women from membership (until 2006) and from eligibility for election (until 2013). The Court nonetheless reached a similar conclusion, finding a breach of the prohibition of discrimination laid down in Article 7 CEDAW. Notably, the Committee’s observations had earlier been cited by the Advocate General and by the Court of Appeal to support their conclusions.

Similarly, one observes a hesitation to engage with UNTB’s interpretations in relation to treaty provisions that do not enjoy direct effect and are not formulated in a sufficiently precise and unconditional way. In a case about housing, another high administrative court, the Council of State, held that Article 31 ESC and Article 11 ICESCR do not lend themselves to judicial review. The CESCR’s Concluding Observations provided an “insufficient basis for a divergent viewpoint” for the Tribunal, which therefore maintained its position that the ICESCR lacks direct effect and merely sets out generally formulated “social objectives” (para. 4.9). The Council likewise did not delve into CESCR’s General Comment No. 4 about the right to adequate housing that was relied on by the applicant.

Conclusion

The extent of national courts’ receptiveness varies across UNTB documents. Domestic courts tend to engage more readily with views than to other types of pronouncements, likely due to their quasi-judicial nature and the generally clearer formulation of treaty breaches. By contrast, the language of concluding observations differs widely in its level of normative commitment, often merely recommending states to increase, intensify or strengthen efforts. Coherence within a UNTB’s own jurisprudence and alignment with the broader human rights framework also influence how readily a court usually engages with its reasoning. Thus, the French deafness towards the clear view and consistent criticism of the CRC Committee, supported in ECtHR case law (Darboe and Camara v. Italy para. 154), is all the more surprising.

These observations underline that the reception of UNTB pronouncements is eventually less a matter of formal legal weight than of judicial attitude. The differences in attitude show that greater conceptual clarity – why and to what extent courts engage with “soft” UNTB output – would foster a more principled and transparent dialogue between national and international human rights adjudication. Under the follow-up procedure, France is required to report within six months on the measures taken in response to the CRC Committee’s latest findings. Whether it will ultimately heed the Committee remains to be seen (para. 94).

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