Belgium made for addressing

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Therein the Court reasoned that through effective control over an area and ‘its inhabitants’, the state exercises ‘public powers’, which in its entirety amounts to jurisdiction in the sense of Article 1 ECHR. In contrast, A

l-Skeini can support an argument that the ‘public phone number list powers’ requirement is relevant to the personal model of extraterritorial jurisdiction (see Milanovic). In the reasoning to the particular facts in Al-Skeini (para 149), the exercise of ‘public powers’ appears to be an additional requirement that needs to be fulfilled for triggering the personal model. Overall, the case law pertaining to ‘public powers’ has been limited and many questions have remained unresolved, including the relevance of the elements of spatial and personal control and their interaction.

What contribution has M.N. and Others v this uncertainty? First, the Court openly observed that ‘in ruling on the applicant’s visa applications, the Belgium authorities took decisions concerning the conditions for entry to Belgium “territory” [it is hard to understand why this word is in inverted commas] and, in so doing, exercised a public power.’ (para 112) However, this could not be enough for passing the jurisdictional threshold (even though the requirements in the above cited para 135 from Al-Skeini, i.e. consent of the territorial state, an agreement and exclusive attribution, will likely be fulfilled in the case of embassies). If it were, as the Court continued to reason in para 112, this would lead to a situation where decisions taken at national level that have an impact on persons abroad, bring these persons within the state jurisdiction. This is a situation that the Court cannot accept.