Preda and Dardari v. Italy (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 3

February 1999

Preda and Dardari v. Italy (dec.) - 28160/95

Decision 23.2.1999

Article 6

Civil proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Alleged legislative interference in the administration of justice: inadmissible

Ruling on an application made by the applicants, both teachers, a court held that for the purposes of calculating their length of service and salary, their employer (the local authority) had to take into account any national service they had performed. After that decision had become final the legislature passed legislation on the interpretation of an earlier statute; from that point on, for the purposes of calculating length of service and salary, national service was to be taken into account only from the date the statute had entered into force. The local authority therefore informed the applicants that it would apply that law. The applicants sought to have the initial judgment enforced and challenged the constitutionality of the interpretative provision on the ground that, as it affected final decisions, it infringed the non-retroactivity principle. The trial court referred the case to the Constitutional Court, which dismissed the constitutional challenge on the ground that the provision was intended to ensure uniform treatment of people who had performed national service over the same period. The applicants maintained that the enactment of the interpretative law had rendered nugatory the effects of the final judgment that had been delivered in their favour.

Inadmissible under Article 6(1), which did not guarantee that the effects of a final judgment were immutable. The Court had, however, previously held that, by intervening in a manner which was decisive to ensure that the outcome of proceedings in which it was a party was favourable to it, a State might be infringing an applicant’s rights under Article 6(1) (see the Stran Greek Refineries and Stratis Andreadis judgment). However, in the instant case, the legislature had intervened only when the proceedings brought by the applicants had ended and its aim had not been to interfere in the applicants’ case but to provide a uniform solution to the cases of everyone in the same position. It followed that it did not appear that it had been the State’s intention to intervene in the applicants’ proceedings in a manner contrary to Article 6(1): manifestly ill-founded.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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