Communicated on 6 March 2017
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 22360/15
Sarafina MARINIĆ and Goran MARINIC
against Croatia
lodged on 4 May 2015
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicants, Ms Sarafina Marinić and Mr Goran Marinić, are Croatian nationals who were born in 1956 and 1983 respectively. The first applicant lives in Šibenik and the second applicant in Zagreb. They are represented before the Court by Mr Ž. Živković, a lawyer practising in Šibenik.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
The late husband of the first applicant and father of the second applicant was a war veteran.
On 28 January 2000 the Zagreb department for Croatian Homeland War veterans and their family members of the Ministry in charge of Homeland War veterans’ affairs (Ministarstvo hrvatskih branitelja iz Domovinskog rata Republike Hrvatske, Odjel hrvatskih branitelja i članova njihovih obitelji Grada Zagreba i županije zagrebačke) awarded the applicants family disability allowance on account of their late husband and father.
Owing to the failure of the State to comply with the aforementioned decision, the applicants instituted civil proceedings before the Šibenik Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Šibeniku) seeking payment of the sum due.
On 17 December 2012 the Šibenik Municipal Court ordered the State to pay the applicants 187,611.52 Croatian kunas (HRK)[1], together with statutory default interest.
On 24 March 2014 the Šibenik County Court (Županijski sud u Šibeniku) upheld the first-instance judgment, save in the part concerning the costs of the proceedings. On 22 April 2014 the first-instance judgment became enforceable.
The parties then lodged an appeal on points of law against the
second-instance judgment, which is still pending.
On 25 April 2014 the applicants applied to the Šibenik office of the Finance Agency (Financijska agencija, Podružnica Šibenik), seeking enforcement of the Šibenik Municipal Court’s judgment.
On 30 April 2014 the State asked the Šibenik Municipal Court to order that the enforcement be postponed until a decision on the parties’ appeal on points of law had been rendered. The State argued that the applicants would be unable to repay the enforced sum in the event that the Supreme Court ruled against them.
On 30 April 2014 the Šibenik Municipal Court ordered the Finance Agency to postpone the enforcement until a decision on the appeal on points of law had been rendered.
The applicants appealed against that decision and on 16 June 2014 the Šibenik County Court dismissed the applicants’ appeal as ill-founded.
The applicants then lodged a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske). On 21 October 2014 the Constitutional Court declared the complaint inadmissible, finding that the matter fell outside its competence.
The decision of the Constitutional Court was served on the applicants’ representative on 5 November 2014.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain, under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, that the State’s failure to comply with an enforceable judgment rendered in their favour violated their right of access to a court.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Did the fact that the State has not complied with an enforceable judgment rendered in the applicants’ favour amount to a violation of the applicants’ right of access to a court under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
The Government are invited to provide copies of all relevant documents concerning the applicants’ case.
[1] Approximately 25,000 euros (EUR) at the time.
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