European Court of Human Rights

FIFTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 644/05
Mariya Yukhymivna LAZEBNA against Ukraine
and 30 other applications
(see list appended)

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 10 April 2012 as a Committee composed of:

Mark Villiger, President,
Karel Jungwiert,
André Potocki, judges,
and Stephen Phillips, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above applications lodged on various dates,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

Mr Solomin (no. 35439/06) is a Russian national and the remaining applicants are Ukrainian nationals; the applicants’ details are specified in the table below. The Ukrainian Government (“the Government”) were represented by Ms Valeria Lutkovska and Mr Nazar Kulchytskyy, of the Ministry of Justice.

The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.

On the dates set out in the table below the domestic courts held for the applicants and ordered the authorities to pay them various pecuniary amounts or take certain actions. The judgments in the applicants’ favour became final but the authorities delayed their enforcement.

COMPLAINTS

The applicants complained about the delayed enforcement of the judgments given in their favour. Some of them also raised other complaints.

THE LAW

The Government invited the Court to strike the applications out of the list of cases and suggested that the declarations might be accepted by the Court as “any other reason” justifying the striking out of the case under Article 37 § 1 (c) of the Convention.

The declarations also provided that the compensation sums were to cover any pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage as well as costs and expenses, to be converted into the national currency of Ukraine at the rate applicable at the date of settlement, and would be free of any taxes that might be chargeable¹. They would be payable within three months from the date of notification of the decision taken by the Court pursuant to Article 37 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In the event of failure to pay these sums within the said three-month period, the Government undertook to pay simple interest on them from expiry of that period until settlement, at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points. This payment would constitute the final resolution of the cases.

The applicants either disagreed with the declarations on various grounds and requested the Court to pursue the examination of their cases or did not provide any comments.

The Court reiterates that it may at any stage of the proceedings strike an application out of its list of cases where the circumstances lead to the conclusions specified under Article 37 § 1 (a)-(c) of the Convention. In particular, under Article 37 § 1 (c) the Court may strike a case out of its list if for any other reason established by the Court, it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the application.

Article 37 § 1 in fine states:

“However, the Court shall continue the examination of the application if respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the protocols thereto so requires”.

The Court also reiterates that in certain circumstances it may strike out an application under Article 37 § 1 (c) on the basis of a unilateral declaration made by a respondent Government even if the applicant wishes the examination of the case to be continued (see Tahsin Acar v. Turkey (preliminary objection) [GC], no. 26307/95, §§ 75-77, ECHR 2003-VI).

The Court recalls that in the aforementioned pilot judgment it ordered Ukraine to grant redress to the applicants whose applications were communicated to the Government before the delivery of the judgment or would be communicated further to the judgment and concerned complaints about the prolonged non-enforcement of domestic decisions for which the State was responsible (see Yuriy Nikolayevich Ivanov v. Ukraine, cited above, § 99 and point 6 of the operative part). Having examined the terms of the Government’s declarations, the Court understands them as intending to give the applicants the redress in accordance with the pilot judgment.

The Court is satisfied that the Government explicitly acknowledge the excessive duration of the enforcement of the judgments given in the applicants’ favour and undertake to enforce the judgments which have not been enforced yet. It also notes that the compensation sums offered by the Government are comparable with Court awards in similar cases, taking account, inter alia, of the specific delay in each particular case.

The Court therefore considers that it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the relevant parts of the applications. It is also satisfied that respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto does not require it to continue the examination of these parts of the applications. Accordingly, they should be struck out of the list.

It follows that these parts of the applications are manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Decides to join the applications;

Takes note of the terms of the respondent Government’s declarations in respect of the applicants’ complaints about the delayed enforcement of the domestic judgments in their favour;

Decides to strike the applications out of its list of cases in so far as they relate to the above complaints in accordance with Article 37 § 1 (c) of the Convention;

Declares the remainder of the applications inadmissible.

Stephen Phillips Mark Villiger
Deputy Registrar President

TABLE