It may be thought that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) can help to find efficient solutions to protect the environment. As a result, civil society and academia sometimes express tremendous expectations about the climate change cases currently pending before that Court. However, the European Court may not be in a position to satisfy such huge hopes. The aim of the proposed paper is to show that the political context within the Council of Europe may not be such as to allow the ECtHR to deepen its environmental case law as far and as quickly as it should, given the environmental emergency. The ECtHR has been steadily developing a case law which in some way protects the environment. It is worth noting that the Court condemns environmental damages only if they simultaneously constitute a violation of a right protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The required link between an environmental concern and a conventionally protected right entails major loopholes that notoriously prevent accurate protection of the environment. One of the ways which could allow the Court to move forward is the recognition of an autonomous right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. This could encourage the Court to shift from indirect to direct environmental protection, and thus to protect natural elements per se. Since 1999, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been calling for an additional protocol to the ECHR on this issue. The Committee of Ministers has twice rejected this proposal. Nonetheless, changes could be expected. On 22 September 2022, the Committee of Ministers adopted the Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 20 on human rights and the protection of the environment. It has then mandated the Steering Committee for Human Rights to consider the need for further work. Finally, the Fourth Summit, held in Reykjavík on 16th and 17th of May, has launched the “Reykjavík process” to strengthen the Council of Europe’s work on the human rights aspects of the environment. Although things seem to be moving in the right direction, an in-depth analysis of the intergovernmental negotiations on the Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 20 reveals that many Council of Europe Member States are not eager to be submitted to new international environmental obligations. They have therefore deliberately avoided recognising an autonomous right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the Recommendation. And yet, all of them, except Russia, had voted in favour of the recognition of that right through the Resolution 48/13 of the Human Rights Council and the Resolution 76/300 of the United Nations General Assembly. This unforeseen discrepancy could mean that states do not want the ECtHR to strengthen its environmental case law too much, by relying on the Recommendation. As the Court tends to be sensitive to the political context within the Council of Europe, it will probably find it strategically wise not to recognise the aforementioned right itself. It may also be tempted to leave most of the obstacles to effective environmental protection in its case law.