24 MAKARATZIS v. GREECE JUDGMENT them to establish a full and circumstantial account of the events and to identify all the policemen who had taken part in the incident. It was impossible for them to do anything else. Therefore no violation could be found in the present case. 3. The third-party intervener 42. The Institut de Formation en Droits de l’Homme du Barreau de Paris, a human rights institute founded in 1979 (hereinafter “the Institute”), submitted written comments regarding the applicability of Article 2 of the Convention and the States’ obligations under that provision, following the leave granted to it by the President of the Court to intervene as a third party (see paragraph 8 above). Its submissions may be summarised as follows. 43. As regards the applicability of Article 2, the Institute considered that it should be possible for that provision to apply in a case where the police had made use of potentially lethal force, even if that force did not cause the death of the person who was the target of the police actions. There should be no waiting for an irreversible violation of the right to life before reviewing the circumstances in which lethal force was used. The Court itself recognised that, in certain circumstances, a merely “potential” or “virtual” victim of a violation was entitled to take action under the Convention (see Soering v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 7 July 1989, Series A no. 161). In that case, the Court had laid emphasis on “the serious and irreparable nature of the alleged suffering risked”. It should thus be possible to transpose this reasoning to a virtual violation of Article 2, since use of lethal force by police officers could indeed, depending on the circumstances, pose a serious risk of violation of the right to life. 44. The Institute acknowledged that the Court had already extended the applicability of Article 2 to cases where the applicant was not killed, but regretted the fact that it had limited the scope of its scrutiny to “only exceptional circumstances” (see Berktay v. Turkey, no. 22493/93, 1 March 2001). Against this background, certain abuses of power by State agents would not fall foul of the Convention on the ground that they did not cause death and, at the same time, did not necessarily meet the applicability conditions of Article 3. Only an extension of the applicability of Article 2 to all cases where lethal force was used, irrespective of the outcome, could fill this loophole. 45. As regards the States’ obligations under Article 2, the Institute stressed that, in addition to the “negative obligation” not to commit an intentional breach of the right to life, there were also a number of “positive obligations” incumbent on them. In particular, the public authorities had a duty to adopt very precise rules governing the use of firearms by lawenforcement officials; the latter should also have proper and regular training. The Institute also referred to the importance of the proportionality rule when making use of potentially lethal force. Lastly, the Institute