Published on 11 July 2022
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 23330/21
SAWAL D.O.O.
against Croatia
lodged on 26 April 2021
communicated on 20 June 2022
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns seizure of the applicant company’s vehicles in customs proceedings.
The applicant is a company incorporated under Slovenian law. It is the owner of 31 vehicles which it leased to another Slovenian company in 2011 and 2012 for a period of one year. Meanwhile, that other company leased the vehicles further to a Croatian company.
In 2012 the Croatian customs authorities found that the Croatian company was in breach of the customs regulations concerning import of those vehicles. It temporarily seized the 31 vehicles in question and ordered the Croatian company to pay the customs debt of some 160,000 euros. The Croatian company failed to do so whereupon, in January 2013, the customs authorities permanently seized the vehicles in order to cover the debt.
In March 2013 the applicant company contacted the Croatian customs authorities and offered to pay the customs debt in order to recover its vehicles. The customs authorities eventually refused to return the vehicles, finding that the customs debt had been extinguished by the seizure of the vehicles in January 2013. They returned the money paid by the applicant company. The applicant company resorted to various remedies but to no avail, last decision being the decision of the Constitutional Court of 17 September 2020.
The applicant company complains, under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that the Croatian authorities failed to take into account its situation of a bona fide owner of the vehicles, who was unaware of the customs proceedings against the Croatian company, and that instead of accepting the payment of the customs debt from it, the State kept the vehicles, the value of which several times supersedes the amount of the customs debt.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Was the interference with the applicant company’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of its possessions necessary to secure the payment of taxes, as required by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention? In particular, did the interference in question impose an excessive individual burden on the applicant company (see Bowler International Unit v. France, no. 1946/06, 23 July 2009; Microintelect OOD v. Bulgaria, no. 34129/03, 4 March 2014; Ünsped Paket Servisi SaN. Ve TiC. A.Ş. v. Bulgaria, no. 3503/08, 13 October 2015, and B.K.M. Lojistik Tasimacilik Ticaret Limited Sirketi v. Slovenia, no.42079/12, 17 January 2017?
2. Did the applicant company have access to a court for its claim to have the vehicles seized by the Croatian customs authorities returned to it, as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?