Communicated on 12 December 2013
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 25701/11
Žarko MILOSAVLJEVIĆ
against Croatia
lodged on 14 April 2011
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Žarko Milosavljević, is a Croatian national, who was born in 1936 and lives in Osijek.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
The applicant retired on 1 July 1992.
In 2005, HPB-Invest, a private investment company in charge of the management of the Pensioners’ Fund from which the indemnity on account of the debt to the pensioners was being paid, informed the applicant that the amount owed to him equalled zero HRK, that is, that he was not entitled to any compensation for the “pension debt”.
On 25 January 2006 the applicant asked the Osijek Regional Office of the Croatian Pension Fund (Hrvatski zavod za mirovinsko osiguranje, područna služba u Osijeku) to re-calculate the amount of compensation owed to him.
On 27 February 2006 the Osijek Regional Office declared the applicant’s application inadmissible for lack of jurisdiction. The relevant part of that decision reads as follows:
“Section 1 paragraph 2 of [the Implementation Act] provides that compensation is to be obtained through a special fund. Given that, pursuant to the said Act, the ... compensation is not to be obtained through the Croatian Pension Fund but through the Pensioners’ Fund, this authority does not have jurisdiction to decide on the request submitted.”
The applicant appealed against that decision.
On 4 April 2006 the Central Office of the Croatian Pension Fund dismissed the applicant’s appeal and upheld the first-instance decision, repeating the reasons given therein. The applicant brought an administrative complaint against that decision in the Administrative Court.
On 12 February 2008 the Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s complaint, endorsing the reasons given by the Fund.
The applicant then lodged a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court. He relied on Article 14 § 2 (equality before the law), Article 19 (the guarantee of legality and judicial review of decisions of administrative and other public authorities) and Article 16 (proportionality in limitations of rights and freedoms) of the Croatian Constitution.
On 16 March 2011 the Constitutional Court declared the applicant’s constitutional complaint inadmissible as without merit.
COMPLAINT
The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that he was deprived of access to court as he was unable to contest, under the domestic law, the calculation of the amount of compensation he was due for the “pension debt”.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the applicant been able to contest the calculation of indemnity due to him under the Act on the Implementation of the Constitutional Court’s Decision of 12 May 1998 (Zakon o provođenju odluke Ustavnog suda od 12. svibnja 1998, Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia nos. 105/2004 and 19/2007) before the domestic courts? In the negative, has there been a violation of the applicant’s right of access to court, contrary to Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
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