Mr Vemal Demir was a member, and Mrs Vicdan Baykara was the president, of the Turkish trade union for civil servants, Tüm Bel Sen.

The matter was then remitted to the District Court, which in defiance restated its view that Demir and Baykara did have a right to collective agreements, because this accorded with International Labour Organization Conventions ratified by Turkey.

"The Grand Chamber then turned to whether the Court of Cassation's annulment of the collective agreement between the trade union Tüm Bel Sen and the authority which had been applied for the previous two years was lawful, based on its interference with article 11 ECHR.

It is highly open to question that these two cases, which preceded the judgment in Demir could be reconciled, given that Convention jurisprudence places the emphasis on justifying restrictions on the human right to free association, and would seem to favour greater attention to the need to collectively bargain.

And so issues would bat to and fro between the two courts in a titanic battle of the juristocrats, each vying for supremacy in the European legal order, one determined to impale trade union rights on the long lance of economic freedom and the other subordinating economic freedom to the modest demands of human rights and constitutionalism.The judgement also elaborated on the living instrument doctrine, stating: the Convention is a living instrument which must be interpreted in the light of present day conditions, and in accordance with developments in international law, so as to reflect the increasingly high standard being required in the area of the protection of human rights, thus necessitating greater firmness in assessing breaches of the fundamental values of democratic societies.