No Immunity for OSCE in Employment Dispute in Denmark

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s secretariat premises in Copenhagen. Credit: © OSCE

In a decision of 27 August 2026, the Danish Supreme Court held that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) could not invoke immunity from jurisdiction in proceedings brought by a dismissed employee. The Court found that the OSCE PA’s internal disciplinary procedure did not offer a reasonable alternative means of resolving the dispute. Dismissing the proceedings on grounds of immunity would therefore violate the employee’s right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Background

The OSCE PA is based in Copenhagen. When the organization established itself there in the early 1990s, it concluded an agreement with Denmark which, among other things, guaranteed the OSCE immunity from legal proceedings.

Relying on its immunity, the OSCE PA objected that the Danish courts could not hear an action for damages brought by a dismissed employee.

The courts of first and second instance reached different conclusions as to whether the case should be dismissed on grounds of immunity. The issue was appealed to the Danish Supreme Court, where the legal question was whether such a dismissal would violate the former employee’s right to a fair trial under Article 6 ECHR.

The Supreme Court’s Decision

At the outset, the Supreme Court observed that granting international organizations immunity from legal proceedings is, in principle, compatible with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 6 ECHR.

Referring to the European Court’s decision of 6 January 2015 in Klausecker v Germany, the Supreme Court nevertheless stated that such immunity must not have the effect of exempting international organizations from the requirements of the ECHR. This applies particularly to the right to a fair trial under Article 6. For an ECHR Member State to grant an international organization immunity from legal proceedings in its courts, there must be a reasonable alternative procedure through which the dispute can be determined.

In the present case, the dismissal had been reviewed by the OSCE PA’s own disciplinary committee before the former employee brought proceedings before the courts. Although the disciplinary committee found that there were no grounds for the dismissal, the Secretary General nevertheless decided to uphold the dismissal.

Since the disciplinary committee’s decision was neither binding nor subject to appeal, the Supreme Court held that the procedure did not constitute a reasonable alternative to judicial proceedings. Upholding the OSCE PA’s immunity would therefore violate Article 6 ECHR. Accordingly, the Danish courts were to hear the case.

Comment

As the scope of the Brussels I bis Regulation, which applies in Denmark under the parallel agreement between Denmark and the European Union, is a matter of uniform EU law, it might have been appropriate for the Danish Supreme Court to consider its relevance.

In Supreme Site Services, C-186/19, the CJEU held that an international organisation’s reliance on immunity does not exclude the application of the Regulation. This raises the question whether the Danish Supreme Court should have examined the Regulation’s applicability to the employment dispute before addressing the OSCE PA’s claim to immunity. Such an examination would, however, not have led to a different conclusion.