FIRST SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 43719/06
Yekaterina Vasilyevna MUTOVKINA
against Russia
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 10 December 2013 as a Committee composed of:
Khanlar Hajiyev, President,
Erik Møse,
Dmitry Dedov, judges,
and André Wampach, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 13 September 2006,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations submitted by the applicant in reply,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
The applicant, Ms Yekaterina Vasilyevna Mutovkina, is a Russian national, who was born in 1951 and lives in Nadym.
The Russian Government (“the Government”) were represented by Mr G. Matyushkin, the Representative of the Russian Federation at the European Court of Human Rights.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
The applicant sued the State (the Federal Fisheries Agency) for compensation of damages in connection with the unlawful seizure of her fish. By a judgment of the Commercial Court of the Yamalo‑Nenetskiy Autonomous Region dated 2 October 2006 the applicant’s claim was granted in part. She was awarded RUB 1,603,780 in damages. The judgment became final and enforceable on 3 November 2006. On 4 October 2007 it was fully enforced.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complained under Article 6 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 about the delayed enforcement of the judgment in her favour.
THE LAW
The Court will examine the complaint about the delayed enforcement of the judgment under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. Insofar as relevant, these Articles read as follows:
Article 6 § 1
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations ..., everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by [a] ... tribunal...”
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
“Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.
The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”
The Court reiterates at the outset that as from 4 May 2009, the date on which the pilot judgment in the case of Burdov v. Russia (no. 2) (no. 33509/04, ECHR 2009) became final, it adjourned the adversarial proceedings on all applications lodged with the Court in which the applicants complained of non-enforcement or delayed enforcement of domestic judgments ordering monetary payments by State authorities pending the adoption of domestic remedial measures. However, such adjournment is without prejudice to the Court’s power at any moment to declare inadmissible any such case (see Burdov (no. 2), cited above, § 146).
The Court also notes that the present case was communicated to the respondent State on 29 May 2012 with a view to its settlement in line with the above-mentioned pilot judgment. The Government argued in response, however, that the complaints were inadmissible because the domestic judgment had been enforced within a reasonable time. The applicant maintained that the delay of execution had been unreasonable, without challenging the Government’s account of facts. In her observations the applicant appeared to insist that she was also entitled to compensation of pecuniary damage that she had sustained due to the inflation occurred in the course of proceedings in question. She also presented her own calculations of the amounts that were allegedly due to her in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
The Court reiterates that an unreasonably long delay in the enforcement of a binding judgment may breach the Convention (see Burdov v. Russia, no. 59498/00, ECHR 2002-III). To decide if the delay was reasonable, it will look, first, at how long it took the authorities to execute the judgment and also how complex the enforcement proceedings were, how the applicant and the authorities behaved, and what the nature of the award was (see Raylyan v. Russia, no. 22000/03, § 31, 15 February 2007).
In the present application, the period of enforcement was less than one year. Having regard to this fact and the Court’s case-law in similar cases, and taking into account the other circumstances of the present case, the Court considers that this period did not fall short of the requirements of the Convention (see, for example, Belkin and Others v. Russia (dec.), no. 14330/07 et al., 5 February 2009). As for the applicant’s arguments prompting the Court to reassess the amount of damages awarded to her by the domestic courts, the Court reiterates that it is not competent, in principle, to review the application of the domestic law and discloses no appearance of violations of the Convention in that respect.
It follows that the non-enforcement complaints raised by the applicant is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
André WampachKhanlar Hajiyev
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy