Information Note on the Court’s case-law 259
February 2022
D'Amico v. Italy - 46586/14
Judgment 17.2.2022 [Section I]
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
No sufficiently compelling reason justifying a retrospective law determining the substance of pensions disputes in pending proceedings: violation
Facts – The applicant successfully brought domestic proceedings in relation to the amount she received from her survivor’s pension after the death of her husband. The relevant authority appealed. While those proceedings were pending, new domestic legislation, providing an authentic interpretation of the law at issue, entered into force. Consequently, the appeal was allowed, the first-instance judgment was reversed and the applicant’s claim was dismissed.
Law – Article 6 § 1: The new law had settled once and for all the terms of the disputes before the ordinary courts retrospectively. The enactment of the law while the proceedings had been pending had determined the substance of the disputes, and its application by the various courts had made it pointless for an entire group of individuals in the applicant’s position to carry on with the litigation. It thus had had the effect of definitively altering the outcome of the pending litigation to which the State was a party, endorsing the State’s position to the applicant’s detriment.
Only compelling general-interest reasons could be capable of justifying such interference by the legislature:
The Government had repeatedly argued that there had been a minority strand of case-law that had been unfavourable to individuals in the same position as the applicant. However, the Court could not discern why the conflicting court decisions, especially after a judgment had upheld the approach in favour of the applicant, would have required legislative intervention while proceedings had been pending. Such divergences were an inherent consequence of any judicial system based on a network of courts with authority of area of their territorial jurisdiction, and the role of a supreme court was precisely to resolve conflicts between decisions of the courts below.
The Government had also argued that the law had been necessary to tackle the heavy financial imbalance of the pension system. However, financial considerations could not by themselves warrant the legislature substituting itself for the courts in order to settle disputes.
They had further argued that the law had been necessary to achieve a homogenous pension system, in particular by abolishing a system which had favoured pensioners of the public sector over others. While this was a reason of some general interest, it was not compelling enough to overcome the dangers inherent in the use of retrospective legislation, which had had the effect of influencing the judicial determination of a pending dispute.
The present case was different from that of other Court cases cited by the Government (see the references below), where the applicants had attempted to take advantage of the deficiencies in the law at issue and the action by the State to remedy the situation had been foreseeable. In the present case, however, there had been no major flaws in the law. Against that background, even assuming that the law had sought to reintroduce the legislature’s original intention, the aim of harmonising the pensions system had not been sufficiently compelling. Indeed, even accepting that the State had been attempting to adjust a situation it had not originally intended to create, it could have done so without resorting to a retrospective application of the law.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 9,700 in respect of pecuniary damage and EUR 6,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See also National & Provincial Building Society, Leeds Permanent Building Society and Yorkshire Building Society v. the United Kingdom, 21319/93 et al., 23 October 1997, Legal Summary; OGIS-Institut Stanislas, OGEC Saint-Pie X and Blanche de Castille and Others v. France, 42219/98 and 54563/00, 27 May 2004, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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