FIRST SECTION
Application no. 70923/11
Dragica Karla MARAVIĆ MARKEŠ
against Croatia
lodged on 20 April 2011
STATEMENT OF FACTS
THE FACTS
The applicant, Ms Dragica Karla Maravić Markeš, is a Croatian national of Serbian ethnic origin who was born in 1949 and lives in Zagreb. Her application was lodged on 20 April 2011.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
In 1989 the applicant was employed as a communal inspector for the Zagreb Municipality (Grad Zagreb). On 25 June 1991 the Executive Council (Izvršno vijeće) of the Zagreb Municipality dismissed the applicant from her position and on 26 June 1991 she was placed at the disposal (stavljena na raspolaganje) of the Municipal Secretariat for Regional Planning, Communal Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure (Gradski sekretarijat za prostorno uređenje, komunalne poslove, promet i veze) as a non-systematised employee, until 30 September 1991.
On 30 September 1991 the Municipal Secretariat for Regional Planning, Communal Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure found that the applicant could not be placed within the system and terminated her employment with a notice period until 31 March 1992. The applicant did not, at the time, receive any severance pay following her dismissal.
On 29 July 2006 the applicant requested the Zagreb Municipality’s Office for Regional Planning, Environmental Protection, Development, Construction, Communal Affairs and Transport (Gradski ured za prostorno uređenje, zaštitu okoliša, izgradnju grada, graditeljstvo, komunalne poslove i promet; hereinafter: “the Municipal Office”) to pay her severance pay. On 10 October 2006 the Municipal Office found that the request for payment should have been submitted within three years of the dismissal and rejected it as lodged out of time. The applicant appealed against this decision to the Chief of the Municipal Office and on 9 November 2006 he dismissed the appeal as ill-founded and upheld the first-instance decision.
On 22 December 2006 the applicant lodged a complaint with the Administrative Court (Upravni sud Republike Hrvatske). On 25 September 2007 the applicant requested that the proceedings before the Administrative Court be expedited. On 5 February 2008 the applicant again requested that the proceedings be expedited and an oral hearing held in her case. On 17 May and 8 December 2008 the applicant requested the Administrative Court to expedite the proceedings and to decide her case in an oral hearing or to decide in her favour without holding an oral hearing.
On 6 May 2009 the Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s complaint. The Administrative Court found that the applicant’s dismissal from work was a result of an internal reorganisation of the municipal body and not because she had been placed at the disposal of the service, and that therefore she was not entitled to severance pay. That court also found that the request for payment had been lodged out of time.
During the proceedings, the Administrative Court communicated the case to the Municipal Office, which submitted observations. In the observations, the Municipal Office raised the issues of the applicant’s entitlement to severance pay and reiterated that the request for payment was lodged out of time. The Administrative Court did not forward these observations to the applicant.
On 5 August 2009 the applicant lodged a constitutional complaint before the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske) complaining, inter alia, about the lack of adversarial proceedings before the Administrative Court. On 30 March 2011 the Constitutional Court declared the applicant’s complaint inadmissible.
In the meantime, on 28 November 2008 the applicant also lodged a complaint with the Supreme Court about the length of the administrative proceedings (Vrhovni sud Republike Hrvatske). On 30 October 2009 her complaint was dismissed since the Supreme Court found that the proceedings had lasted for two years, eight months and fifteen days at two levels of jurisdiction, which it did not consider excessive. The applicant appealed against this decision and on 7 February 2011 a panel of judges of the Supreme Court dismissed her appeal.
COMPLAINTS
Under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention the applicant complains as follows:
-that the Administrative Court failed to communicate to her the observations of the Municipal Office submitted during the proceedings;
-that it failed to hold an oral hearing;
-about the outcome of the administrative proceedings in that the domestic authorities failed to interpret the procedural and substantive rules properly and thus erred in their decision; and
-about the length of the proceedings.
Relying on Article 13 the Convention, the applicant complains that she did not have any other remedy available than a constitutional complaint against the Administrative Court’s judgment.
Under Article 14 of the Convention, the applicant complains that she was discriminated against on the basis of her Serbian ethnic origin during the proceedings before the national authorities.
The applicant also complains under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that she was deprived of her legitimate expectation of receiving severance pay.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of her civil rights and obligations, in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention? In particular, was the principle of adversarial proceedings before the Administrative Court respected?
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