Information Note on the Court’s case-law 213
December 2017
Društvo za varstvo upnikov v. Slovenia (dec.) - 66433/13
Decision 21.11.2017 [Section IV]
Article 34
Victim
Association claiming domestic compensation award in length-of-proceedings case should have taken into account interests of its individual members: absence of victim status
Facts – The applicant association was founded in August 1996 by a large group of creditors of a failed investment company who transferred their claims to the association so it could institute proceedings. In the event of success, the association was to transfer a proportionate share of the joint award, less costs and taxes, back to the creditors. The association instituted proceedings against the two owners of the investment company in 1997 and obtained judgment in 2007. An appeal by the second owner was dismissed in 2008. The association also lodged an application under the 2006 Act on Protection of the Right to a Trial without Undue Delay for compensation for the delays in the proceedings against the owners. This culminated in an award to the association of EUR 4,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage for proceedings which had lasted more than eleven years at two levels of jurisdiction.
In the Convention proceedings, the association complained of the length of the domestic proceedings and submitted that it still had victim status as the domestic award was insufficient since it failed to take into account the fact that the association was actually representing 1,484 individuals, each of whose rights to a trial within a reasonable time had been violated.
Law – Article 34: The association’s status depended on whether the award of EUR 4,500 was adequate and sufficient. In order to answer that question the Court first had to ascertain whether a case involving multiple claimants joined in an association which acts as a single party to the proceedings should be dealt with in the same manner as cases involving one individual claimant, or whether the interests of the individual members of the association should be taken into account.
The Court had held in Arvanitaki-Roboti and Others v. Greece and Kakamoukas and Others v. Greece that awards of compensation in length-of-proceedings cases involving multiple applicants had to take into account the manner in which the number of participants in such proceedings may influence the level of distress, inconvenience and uncertainty affecting each of them. However, contrary to the position in those cases, where all the applicants were parties first to the domestic proceedings and then to the proceedings before the Court, in the instant case the association had already been acting as one single legal entity separate from its members in the domestic proceedings and had remained a single party in the Convention proceedings. The Court thus had to be cautious in applying the principles applicable to multiple applicants to a situation where the affected individuals, instead of acting on their own behalf in judicial proceedings, had established a legal entity to do so.
The association had argued that the particular features of the assignment agreements by which the individual creditors had transferred their claims to the association justified taking into account their individual interests. However, the Court could not overlook the fact that any particularities regarding the transfer of the claims concerned solely the internal relationship between the association and its members, while the association operated as a separate entity with its own legal rights and obligations in its relations with third parties and in judicial proceedings. The association could not be considered merely an aggregate of its members’ individual interests. The very nature of its existence as a separate legal personality meant that the interests claimed in the civil and the ensuing compensation proceedings were perceived and decided by the domestic courts as its own interests. Accordingly, the association could not legitimately expect those same interests to be taken into account twice: once as its own interests, and once as the interests of its members.
In these circumstances, the fact that the domestic authorities had not taken into account the interests of individual members of the association when determining the level of non-pecuniary damage sustained had not contravened the requirements of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. The sum awarded to the association could be considered sufficient and therefore appropriate redress for the violation suffered, and accordingly the association could no longer claim to be a “victim” within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention.
Conclusion: inadmissible (incompatible ratione personae).
(See also Arvanitaki-Roboti and Others v. Greece [GC] and Kakamoukas and Others v. Greece [GC], 27278/03 and 38311/02 respectively, 15 February 2008, both summarised in Information Note 105)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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