Information Note on the Court’s case-law 191
December 2015
Károly Nagy v. Hungary - 56665/09
Judgment 1.12.2015 [Section II]
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Access to court
Supreme Court ruling that civil courts had no jurisdiction to hear pastor’s claim for wrongful dismissal by church: no violation
[This case was referred to the Grand Chamber on 2 May 2016]
Facts – The applicant was a pastor in a Calvinist parish. In 2005 he was dismissed for a comment he had made in a local newspaper. He brought a compensation claim against his employer, the Hungarian Calvinist Church, in a labour court but the proceedings were discontinued for want of jurisdiction, since the applicant’s relationship with his employer was regulated by ecclesiastical law. The applicant subsequently lodged a claim in the civil courts, but this too was ultimately discontinued after the Supreme Court ruled, following an analysis of the contractual relationship, that the civil courts had no jurisdiction either.
Before the European Court the applicant contended that the Supreme Court’s ruling that the State courts had no jurisdiction had deprived him of access to a court, in breach of Article 6 § 1.
Law – Article 6 § 1: The applicant had not been prevented from bringing his claim before the domestic courts. Indeed, the case had been litigated up to the Supreme Court, which had examined whether the Calvinist Church owed him any contractual obligation pursuant to the relevant domestic law provisions, before concluding that the pastoral relationship between the applicant and the Calvinist Church was not regulated by civil law, but by ecclesiastical law. The Court could not conclude that the Supreme Court’s decision was arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable and it was not its task to decide whether the domestic law provisions should have been extended to the applicant’s engagement with the Calvinist Church, since it could not substitute its own views for those of the domestic courts as to the proper interpretation and content of domestic law.
Thus, the inability of the applicant to obtain an adjudication of his claim against the Calvinist Church did not flow from immunity, either de facto or in practice, of the Church, or any another procedural obstacle, but from the applicable principles governing the substantive right to fulfilment of contractual obligations and to compensation for breach of contract, as defined by the domestic law.
In conclusion, although the Supreme Court held that the State courts had no jurisdiction to examine the applicant’s claim, it had in fact examined the claim in the light of the relevant domestic legal principles of contract law. The applicant could not, therefore, argue that he had been deprived of the right to a determination of the merits of his claim.
Conclusion: no violation (four votes to three).
(See the Factsheet on Work-related rights)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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