European Court of Human Rights

FIFTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no 3260/07
TRGOAGENT D.O.O.
against Slovenia

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 14 February 2012 as a Committee composed of:

Ann Power-Forde, President,
Boštjan M. Zupančič,
Angelika Nußberger, judges,
and Stephen Phillips, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 28 December 2006,

Having regard to the Government’s settlement proposal made to the applicant,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

FACTS

The applicant, Trgoagent D.O.O., is a company whose registered office is in Ljubljana. It was represented before the Court by Ms M. Končan Verstovšek, a lawyer practising in Celje. The facts of the cases, as submitted by the applicant company, may be summarised as follows.

The applicant company was a party to proceedings no. P 807/2000, which were finally resolved on 10 January 2007. The applicant company was also a party to further seven sets of proceedings, which were pending before the first- or the second-instance court when the 2006 Act on the Protection of the Right to a Trial without Undue Delay (“the 2006 Act”) was implemented and subsequently continued for more than four months. Only in two of them the applicant company lodged acceleratory remedies which were upheld. The applicant company did not afterwards lodge a claim for just satisfaction in respect of these two sets of proceedings.

COMPLAINTS

The applicant company complained under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention about the excessive length of proceedings and under Article 13 of the Convention about the lack of an effective domestic remedy in that regard.

THE LAW

A.  The first set of proceedings (no. P 807/2000)

The Court notes that, after the Government had been given notice of the application, they informed the Court that they had reached a settlement with the applicant company as regards the violation of the right to a trial within a reasonable time. The applicant company subsequently informed the Court that it wished to withdraw its complaints under Articles 6 and 13 as regards the above set of proceedings.

The Court takes note that following the settlement reached between the parties the matter has been resolved at the domestic level and that the applicant company wishes to withdraw its application in the part concerning its complaints about the undue length of proceedings no. P 807/2000 and the lack of an effective remedy in that respect. It is satisfied that respect for human rights as defined in the Convention or its Protocols does not require the examination of this part of the application to be continued (Article 37 § 1 in fine of the Convention).

In view of the above, it is appropriate to strike the application as far as it concerns the above complaints out of the list in accordance with Article 37 § 1 (a) of the Convention.

B.  The remaining seven sets of proceedings

With respect to the further seven sets of proceedings, the Court notes that the proceedings were pending before the first- or second-instance court when the 2006 Act became operational, and have subsequently continued for more than four months. It further recalls that in situations such as the present one, it is open to applicants to seek the acceleration of the proceedings under the 2006 Act by means of a supervisory appeal or a motion for a deadline. Moreover, the applicants may ultimately obtain further redress through a compensatory remedy, by bringing a claim for just satisfaction under Section 15 of the 2006 Act (see Nezirovič v. Slovenia (dec.), no. 16400/06, 25 November 2008). It was therefore open to the applicant company to effectively avail itself of the remedies provided under the 2006 Act, but it failed to do so.

It follows that the applicant company’s complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention must be declared inadmissible under Article 35 § 1 of the Convention due to non-exhaustion of domestic remedies and rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

Having regard to the foregoing, the applicant company’s complaint under Article 13 that the remedies at its disposal for excessively lengthy proceedings were ineffective must be declared manifestly ill-founded under Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention (see Nezirović, cited above, § 43).

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Decides to strike the application out of its list of cases with regard to the proceedings no. P 807/2000;

Declares inadmissible the remainder of the application.

Stephen Phillips Ann Power-Forde
Deputy Registrar President