THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 38566/04
Daniel NICOLESCU and Estera NICOLESCU
against Romania
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 14 January 2014 as a Chamber composed of:
Josep Casadevall, President,
Alvina Gyulumyan,
Ján Šikuta,
Luis López Guerra,
Nona Tsotsoria,
Kristina Pardalos,
Iulia Antoanella Motoc, judges,
and Marialena Tsirli, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 10 February 2005,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicants,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
FACTS AND PROCEDURE
1. The applicants, Mr Daniel Nicolescu and Ms Estera Nicolescu, are Romanian nationals, who were born in 1939 and 1946 respectively and live in Bacău. They were represented before the Court by Mr A. Surdescu, a lawyer practising in Bucharest.
2. The Romanian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their co‑Agent, Ms I. Cambrea and then by their Agent, Ms C. Brumar, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
3. In a final decision of 4 May 2004 the Bacău County Court dismissed the criminal complaint lodged by the applicants against two journalists who had published several articles about them. At that time, they were respectively the director and a teacher in a local high school.
4. The decision became available on 18 May 2004.
5. On 10 August 2004 the applicants sent a letter to the Court stating that “the Romanian State breached some of [their] rights guaranteed by the Convention” and asking for an application form in order to “legally lodge their application with the Court” (ca modalitate legală de sesizare a Curţii).
6. On 29 October 2004 the Court forwarded the application form and instructed the applicants on how to read the admissibility requirements set out in Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention and Rules 45 and 47 of the Rules of Court.
7. On 10 February 2005 the applicants sent their application form and supportive documents, raising comprehensive complaints under Articles 6 § 1 and 8 of the Convention.
THE LAW
8. The Government argued that the applicants failed to respect the six‑months time-limit set by the Convention for lodging their application.
9. The applicants contested that position. In their view, the date of their first letter should be considered that of the lodging of their application. They pointed out that at that date they had not had legal counselling and therefore needed a certain amount of time to study the Court’s requirements for filling in the application form. They asked the Court to apply the admissibility rules without excessive formalism.
10. In accordance with the established practice of the Convention organs, based on Article 35 § 1 of the Convention and Rule 47 § 5 of the Rules of Court (as applicable at that time) the Court considers the date of the introduction of an application to be the date of the first letter indicating an intention to lodge an application and giving some indication of the nature of the application. The purpose of the six month rule is to promote security of the law, to ensure that cases raising Convention issues are dealt with within a reasonable time and to protect the authorities and other persons concerned from being under uncertainty for a prolonged period of time (see, mutatis mutandis, (see P.M. v. the United Kingdom (dec.), no. 6638/03, 24 August 2004 and Vural v. Turkey, no. 56007/00, § 29, 21 December 2004).
11. In the present case, the letter sent by the applicants on 10 August 2004 did not give any indication of the nature of the application, in particular any information on the facts of the case or the complaints that they intended to raise with the Court. Therefore it does not meet the criteria set out in Rule 47 § 5 of which the applicants were duly informed.
12. Consequently, the applicants lodged their complaints with the Court on 10 February 2005, thus more than six months after the date when the final decision in the case had become available.
13. It follows that the application has been introduced out of time and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Marialena TsirliJosep Casadevall
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy