FOURTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 7539/16
Evgeni Georgiev ANGELOV and Aneta Georgieva IVANOVA
against Bulgaria
The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 17 November 2020 as a Committee composed of:
Tim Eicke, President,
Faris Vehabović,
Pere Pastor Vilanova, judges,
and Ilse Freiwirth, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 28 January 2016,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicants,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicants, Mr Evgeni Georgiev Angelov and Ms Aneta Georgieva Ivanova, are Bulgarian nationals, who were born in 1946 and 1949 respectively and live in Sofia. They were represented before the Court by Ms S. Razboynikova, a lawyer practising in Sofia.
2. The Bulgarian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mrs V. Hristova, of the Ministry of Justice.The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.Main judgment in favour of the applicants
4. On 12 June 2005, in proceedings under the State and Municipalities Responsibility for Damage Act 1988, the Sofia Court of Appeal awarded the applicants BGN 23,825.50 (equivalent to about EUR 12,000), plus legal interest counted from 20 June 2003 until payment, in respect of pecuniary damage. The court found that the damage was caused by the failure of the Blagoevgrad Regional Governor (“the governor”) to issue in due time a temporary certificate determining the compensation due to the applicants for a nationalised property of the applicants’ ancestor. The award also included EUR 900 in costs and expenses. The Supreme Court of Cassation (“SCC”) upheld the lower court’s judgment on 29 November 2007 in a final decision.First set of enforcement proceedings
5. On 7 February 2008 the applicants obtained a writ of enforcement and on 18 February 2008 started enforcement proceedings (enforcement case no. 19/2008). On three occasions – respectively 22 February 2008, 7 May 2009 and 14 February 2011 – the bailiff sent invitations for voluntary compliance to the governor, as well as the applicants’ bank account so he could pay the sum due to them. The writ of enforcement was not submitted to the governor on those occasions.
6. On 18 May 2009 the governor acknowledged in writing his debt to the bailiff and stated that the money would be paid to the applicants in line with Article 519 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
7. On 26 May 2015 the bailiff terminated the proceedings in enforcement case no. 19/2008 on the ground that no enforcement actions had been requested by the creditor for two years. The applicants did not appeal against this decision and it became final.Proceedings brought by the governor contesting the debt
8. In April 2008 the governor unsuccessfully sought the reopening of the proceedings which had ended on 29 November 2007 (see paragraph 4 above).
9. Subsequently, in 2011 the governor sought to have the judgment of 12 June 2005 declared null and void. On 27 April 2012 the Sofia District Court rejected his claim and, on appeal, the Sofia City Court confirmed this decision on 29 April 2013. On 5 March 2014 the SCC did not accept to hear the governor’s related cassation appeal.
10. The courts awarded the applicants EUR 1,200 for costs and expenses in those proceedings, to be paid by the governor.Second set of enforcement proceedings
11. On 1 October 2015 the applicants started new enforcement proceedings (enforcement case no. 8432/2015). They sought to collect from the governor the amounts awarded to them on 12 June 2005 (see paragraph 4 above) and the costs and expenses awarded to them in the proceedings which had ended on 5 March 2014 (see paragraph 10 above). On 6 October 2015 the bailiff sent a new invitation for voluntary compliance to the governor, submitting with it the writ of enforcement of 7 February 2008.
12. On 14 December 2015 the governor undertook to pay the applicants, in respect of the debts mentioned in the preceding paragraph, about EUR 14,000 and both parties concluded an agreement to that effect on the same date. The agreement included a statement by the governor’s administration, according to which the administration did not owe the applicants a further sum of EUR 17,000 in legal interest, because of the expiry of the relevant limitation period. According to the statement, this circumstance had to be separately established in court.
13. On 15 December 2015 the governor paid the applicants about EUR 14,000 in accordance with the above agreement.
14. On 26 February 2016 the applicants brought a claim under Article 306 of the Administrative Procedure Code, asking the court to impose a sanction on the governor for failing to comply with the final domestic judgment ordering him to pay money to them. The Blagoevgrad Administrative Court rejected the claim in a final decision. The court found that, as the governor had been obliged to pay a sum of money, the enforcement proceedings had to be conducted in accordance with the Civil Procedure Code and not the Administrative Procedure Code.
15. On 1 June 2016 the bailiff informed the governor that he still owed the applicants EUR 17,500 in legal interest accrued between 20 June 2003 and 14 December 2015 on the principal amount of damages awarded by the court on 12 June 2005 and paid by the governor on 15 December 2015, as well as EUR 2,700 in costs and expenses under enforcement case no. 8432/2015 (see paragraph 11 above).Proceedings brought by the governor contesting the debt in respect of the legal interest
16. On 14 September 2016 the governor brought a claim before the Sofia City Court, seeking to have declared that he did not owe EUR 17,500 in legal interest because that part of the debt had become time-barred. In particular, he contended that the starting of enforcement proceedings in 2008 and the invitations for voluntary compliance which the bailiff had sent thereafter did not interrupt the running of the limitation period. With the expiry of a three-year, or at the most five-year, period the possibility to collect the debt had lapsed, respectively in 2011 or 2013. All subsequent actions by the bailiff were irrelevant.
17. The applicants contested the governor’s submissions.
18. In a judgment of 30 January 2018 the Sofia City Court rejected the governor’s claim, finding that the bailiff’s invitations for voluntary compliance sent to the governor were actions interrupting the limitation period. The court also noted that, instead of submitting the writ of enforcement directly to the governor, the applicants had started enforcement proceedings via a bailiff, who in turn had made three invitations for voluntary compliance to the governor without submitting the writ of enforcement itself (see paragraph 5 above). The court further established that on 6 October 2015 the bailiff had attached a copy of the writ of enforcement to the invitation for voluntary compliance sent to the governor (see paragraph 11 above).
19. Upon an appeal by the governor, on 27 February 2019 the Sofia Court of Appeal quashed the lower court’s judgment and upheld the governor’s claim, finding that he did not owe EUR 17,500 in legal interest. The court observed that neither the applicants, nor the bailiff who had been attempting to collect for the applicants the sums which the governor owed them, had submitted the writ of enforcement to the governor’s office at any point in time before 2015. The writ of enforcement was only submitted to the governor’s office on 6 October 2015 (see paragraph 11 above).
20. The applicants’ cassation appeal ended with a decision by the SCC of 27 January 2020 in which the court refused to hear the case on the merits.Relevant domestic law and practiceEnforcement of monetary debts against State authorities
21. Enforcement proceedings were not, and continue not to be, possible where the State owes money. Article 519 of the Code of Civil Procedure 2007 provides that direct-enforcement proceedings against a State body aimed at collecting a monetary debt are not possible. A writ of enforcement evidencing the claim has to be obtained from the court and then submitted to the authority’s financial department. If there are no funds available in the State body’s budget, the authorities have to ensure that funds become available in the next year’s budget.
22. The domestic courts have consistently confirmed that direct‑enforcement proceedings against State institutions owing debts on the basis of final judgments were not possible, as well as that the specific procedure to be followed was the one provided in Article 519 of the Code of Civil Procedure 2007 (реш. № 198 от 14.07.2010 г. на окр. съд Хасково, г. о. по ч. гр. д. № 380; реш. от 15.05.2015 г. на окр. съд София по ч. гр. д. № 320/2015 г. реш. № 173 от 23.03.2015 г. на окр. съд Пазарджик по гр. д. № 195/ 2015 г.; реш. от 13.07.2016 г. на окр. съд Сливен по гр. д. № 306/ 2016 г.; реш. № 131859 от 29.05.2017 г. на СРС по гр. д. № 22589/2016 г.). The Supreme Court of Cassation held in a decision of 2016 that payment by a State entity on the basis of a final judgment is effected after the presentation of the original writ of enforcement to that entity (опр. № 194/27.04.2016 по дело № 604/2016 на ВКС, ТК, I т.о.).Limitation period in civil law
23. Section 110 of the Obligations and Contracts Act provides that the limitation period for all claims is five years, save for those for which a special period is set out. Section 120 of the same Act states that the limitation period is not applied by the courts by their own motion.
COMPLAINTS
24. Relying on Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, the applicants complained of the failure of the authorities to comply with the final court judgment ordering the governor to pay money to them. Relying further on Article 13 of the Convention, the applicants complained about not having an effective remedy in connection with their complaint above.
THE LAWThe parties’ submissions
25. The Government submitted that the applicants had ceased to be victims of a Convention violation, as on 15 December 2015 they had received the full amount which had been due to them under the judgments of 12 June 2005 and 5 March 2014. By signing the agreement on 14 December 2015, they had accepted that the question whether the legal interest corresponding to the main judgment was still owed to them would be decided by a court. The courts had subsequently found that the governor no longer owed money in legal interest to the applicants.
26. The Government specified that it was the applicants’ own omission, in particular to submit the writ of enforcement to the governor’s office, that had led to the expiry of the limitation period in respect of the remainder of the governor’s debt. The applicable law clearly provided a special procedure for collecting monetary debts from State bodies and it did not involve the starting of enforcement proceedings as the applicants had erroneously done. The mere submission of the writ of enforcement to the indebted State body would have interrupted the running of the limitation period in respect of the debt, yet the applicants had failed to do so.
27. The applicants disagreed. They emphasised that the governor had pursued two sets of proceedings claiming that he did not owe the debt in question. It was therefore understandable why the applicants had turned to a bailiff instead of submitting the writ of enforcement directly to the governor’s administration. As it could be seen from the actions of the governor, even if the applicants had submitted the writ of enforcement to him, he would not have paid them. In any event, the applicants submitted the original of the writ of enforcement to him in October 2015.
28. They emphasised that the main judgment in their favour had remained unenforced in its part regarding the legal interest and the principal amount had been paid to them with an eight-year delay. The fact that they had signed an agreement accepting that this question be decided in court did not mean that they had renounced to collecting the amount. Indeed, they pursued different sets of proceedings in an attempt to obtain payment of that amount. The governor could not advance his own unlawful failure to fully enforce the judgment as a reason for the expiry of the limitation period.The Court’s assessment
29. The applicants’ complaint is in essence about the failure of the governor, a State body, to comply with a final judgment in their favour by virtue of which the governor owed money to them, and the impossibility for them to oblige the governor to pay.
30. The Court notes that it is not in dispute that the authorities paid the applicants the principal amount they owed to them pursuant to two judgments in their favour (see paragraph 13 above). In so far as the Government pleaded that the applicants lost their victim status as a result of the payment of the judgment debts, the Court considers it unnecessary to examine this issue, since in any event it finds the application inadmissible for the reasons set out below.
31. The applicants advanced that the authorities had paid them with an eight-year delay and that the amount corresponding to the legal interest had remained unpaid. The Court has repeatedly held that an unreasonably long delay in enforcement of a binding judgment may breach the Convention, as well as that the reasonableness of such delay is to be determined with regard to the complexity of the enforcement proceedings, the applicant’s own behaviour and that of the competent authorities, and the amount and nature of the court award (see Burdov v. Russia (no. 2), no. 33509/04, § 66, ECHR 2009). That said, a successful litigant may be required to undertake certain procedural steps in order to recover the judgment debt (see Shvedov v. Russia, no. 69306/01, § 32, 20 October 2005). The creditor’s uncooperative behaviour may be an obstacle to the timely enforcement of a judgment, thus alleviating the authorities’ responsibility for delays (see Belayev v. Russia (dec.), 36020/02, 22 March 2011).
32. The Court notes that, following the final main judgment in the applicants’ favour, they obtained a writ of enforcement in respect of the amount awarded to them in it (see paragraph 5 above). This was the first step in the procedure for seeking enforcement of a monetary obligation by a State body. As is evident from domestic law (see paragraph 21 above), in order for the indebted entity to pay, the writ had to be presented to its financial department. The Court observes that the domestic courts have consistently confirmed that this procedure was the legal prerequisite for the enforcement process to be started and completed in situations where a State entity owed payment on the basis of a final judgment (see paragraph 22 above).
33. However, as it would appear from the materials in the case file, and as the applicants themselves conceded, they only complied with this procedure in October 2015 (see paragraphs 18, 19 and 27 above). That was slightly less than eight years after the final main judgment in their favour. The governor paid to them the principal amount of the debt two months later (see paragraph 13 above). Consequently, the Court finds that the delay in payment cannot be attributed to the authorities, given that it was the applicants themselves who did not comply with the requisite procedure for years.
34. As regards the remaining part of the governor’s debt, the following is relevant. In the agreement signed voluntarily by the applicants with the governor on 14 December 2015, they accepted that the question whether the legal interest corresponding to the principal amount was still owed to them would be decided in court (see paragraph 12 above). Accordingly, they waived their right to seek payment of that remaining part of the debt via the procedure for collecting monetary debts from State bodies and undertook to have the issue whether that amount was still owed to them decided by the courts. Following judicial proceedings brought by the governor to that end, the courts found that he did not owe the legal interest to the applicants as the relevant limitation period had lapsed. Therefore, the applicants cannot hold the outcome of those judicial proceedings, which were dealt with by three levels of domestic courts and which happened not to be in their favour, against the authorities.
35. In these circumstances, the Court finds that the application must be rejected as manifestly ill‑founded, pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 10 December 2020.
Ilse FreiwirthTim Eicke
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy