Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 71
January 2005
Blücher v. the Czech Republic - 58580/00
Judgment 11.1.2005 [Section II]
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Alleged arbitrary interpretation by the courts of provisions relating to restitution of property: no violation
Public hearing
Lack of public hearing before the Constitutional Court: no violation
Facts: The applicant had inherited from his cousin properties situated in the territory of the Czech Republic which had been nationalised by the State during the Communist period. In 1992 he exercised his rights under the Land Ownership Act. The Act stated that individuals who had been deprived of their property and were entitled to request restitution of their assets were to be of Czechoslovakian nationality and reside within the national territory; in the event of the death of a person who had been deprived of his or her property, heirs who fulfilled the nationality and residence conditions were entitled to apply for restitution, subject to certain conditions which concerned the rules governing legacies. In the applicant’s case, the Constitutional Court stated that the nationality criterion laid down in the Act must also have been met by the property’s original owner. The administrative authorities dismissed the applicant’s request on that ground, noting the absence of evidence that the original owner of the properties concerned had been of Czechoslovakian nationality. The municipal court found that the question of the original owner’s nationality was irrelevant. It based its decision on the applicant’s status as an heir and held that, on that specific point, he failed to meet the legal conditions concerning the rules governing legacies. The Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s appeal, and its decision was based on the same ground as its previous judgment. A further application for restitution resulted in administrative and judicial decisions which were based on similar arguments. The Constitutional Court upheld its previous opinions and concluded that, under the principle that ‘no-one may transmit to another more rights than he or she enjoys’, heirs could not enjoy more rights than the original owner.
Law: Article 6 § 1 – Judicial interpretations of the law: All the courts which had ruled on the disputed proceedings had stated with sufficient clarity the reasons for which they had reached their decisions, and there was no indication of arbitrariness in their positions. It was within the Constitutional Court’s jurisdiction to fill the legal vacuum revealed by this case, by means of an interpretation that complied with the Constitution and took account of the Act’s spirit and objective. In that connection, its reference to the principle that ‘no-one may transmit to another more rights than he or she enjoys’had not been illogical. Moreover, the State had met its obligation to act with the utmost consistency in order to ensure legal certainty. The issue of whether the criterion of Czechoslovakian nationality was also applicable to the original owner had been the subject of several consistent rulings by the Constitutional Court, and the applicant had never been placed in a situation of legal uncertainty as a result of previous final decisions being called into question.
Failure to hold a hearing before the Constitutional Court: The constitutional proceedings, which were restricted to an examination of issues of constitutionality, did not imply a direct and comprehensive assessment of the applicant’s civil rights. The failure to hold a hearing before the Constitutional Court had been sufficiently compensated by the public hearings held before the municipal court.
Burden of proof: The applicant was required to prove that his cousin, who had died in 1974, had been of Czechoslovakian nationality, but the Court was not satisfied that it had been absolutely impossible to furnish that proof, given, inter alia, the historical context in the post-war period and the interest German-speaking persons could have had in asserting their loyalty to the Czechoslovakian State. Nor had the applicant claimed that he had been denied access to the relevant registers.
Fairness of the proceedings concerning claims for restitution of property: Given that the Convention did not impose on the Contracting States any restriction on their freedom to determine the scope of legislation that they might adopt concerning the restitution of property and decide on the conditions under which they agreed to restore property rights to dispossessed persons, it was for the Czech courts in this case, particularly the highest Court of the country, to interpret the legislation enacted at the time of reconstruction of the country, such as that aimed at redressing certain wrongs committed in the past. In the instant case, the courts had fulfilled the role with which they were entrusted in a State governed by the rule of law and, in so far as their conclusions could not be described as arbitrary, the Court could not call them into question.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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