M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS 95 Netherlands, 19 February 1998, §§ 45 et seq., Reports 1998-I)? Instead, however, not only does the present judgment not declare the complaint under Article 3 concerning refoulement inadmissible, it even declares it “arguable” (see the citation above in section 1). (b) Principle of subsidiarity Without stating as much, the Court is very likely applying here the principle of subsidiarity, as it transpires from Article 1 of the Convention. According to this principle, it falls primarily to the States to guarantee and implement the rights enshrined in the Convention. The function of the Convention and the Court remains to provide a European minimum standard (see Handyside v. the United Kingdom, 7 December 1976, § 48, Series A no. 24). I am all in favour of the principle of subsidiarity, but I think here is the wrong place to apply it. Tribute has already been paid to subsidiarity in this case by testing the complaint expressly or implicitly with various admissibility conditions and in particular with that of the exhaustion of domestic remedies (which is in itself an application of the principle of subsidiarity par excellence). Subsidiarity plays an important part, for instance, in applying the second paragraphs of Articles 8 to 11 of the Convention. Its role must surely be more restricted in the light of a cardinal provision such as Article 3 and in view of the central importance of the applicant’s refoulement for this case. In any event, in my opinion, subsidiarity does not permit such a complaint to be “downgraded” so that it is no longer independently examined. (c) The Court’s experience in examining such issues There is nothing new in the fact that the Court will on its own examine whether there is a risk of treatment in the applicant’s home country which would be contrary to Article 3 of the Convention. The Court does this all the time. Even if domestic authorities have examined the implications of the deportation, it is not at all certain that their conclusions enable the Court, without any further examination of the case, to dispose of the matter. Often, the Court itself will have to undertake the necessary investigations as to the situation in the receiving State even after the domestic authorities have dealt with the matter. To mention but one example: in the Saadi v. Italy case ([GC], no. 37201/06, ECHR 2008), concerning deportation to Tunisia, the domestic authorities’ reasons for allowing that applicant’s refoulement concerned mainly assurances which the Tunisian government had given to Italy – assurances which the Court in its judgment found to be insufficient. The Court was then obliged to examine itself, and in detail, the situation in Tunisia, relying, inter alia, on reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These arguments had not been examined by the Italian