FIRST SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 1697/20
SOCIETÀ SVILUPPO FINANZIARIO M.G. S.R.L.
against Italy
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 28 November 2024 as a Committee composed of:
Erik Wennerström, President,
Raffaele Sabato,
Artūrs Kučs, judges,
and Liv Tigerstedt, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 1697/20) against the Italian Republic lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 23 December 2019 by a limited liability company registered in Italy, Società Sviluppo Finanziario M.G. S.r.l. (“the applicant company”), which was represented by Mr M. De Stefano and Mr G. Greco, lawyers practising in Rome;
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns administrative proceedings brought by the applicant company to obtain a revision of prices for works it had carried out under public procurement contracts. The applicant company complained about alleged violations of Article 6 of the Convention (right to a court) and of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.
2. On 15 May 2019 the applicant company sent to the Court a copy of an application form that contained a copied signature, together with the relevant documents. The application form was assigned application number 28241/19.
3. By a letter of 4 June 2019 the Court informed the applicant company that it had not complied with the requirements set out in Rule 47 of the Rules of Court since the original signature of the applicant company’s legal representative or of its lawyer was missing. Therefore, its complaints could not be examined by the Court and the six-month period referred to in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention would be interrupted only when a complete application was sent to the Court.
4. By letters of 10 June 2019 and 9 October 2019 the applicant company informed the Court that on 15 May 2019 it had sent two envelopes. The first one (registered letter no. RC047322785IT, received on 24 May 2019) contained a copy of the application form and all the relevant documents. A second one (registered letter no. RC047322799IT, received on 28 May 2019) contained the original application form. It considered that this circumstance led the Court to commit an error and invited it to search for the two registered letters to verify that the second one contained the original application form.
5. By a letter of 12 December 2019 the Court informed the applicant company that the Registry did not keep files following a Rule 47 rejection and that therefore, if it wished the Court to examine its complaints, it had to submit a fresh application form where it could also substantiate the reasons why Rule 47 § 6 (b) of the Rules of the Court should have applied in its case.
6. On 23 December 2019 the applicant company sent a fresh application form which was registered under the application number 1697/20.
7. Invoking Rule 47 § 6 b) of the Rules of the Court, it requested the Court to consider that the application was introduced on the date of its first transmission, that is on 15 May 2019.
THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT
8. The Court reiterates that the time-limit for lodging applications provided for in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention – six months at the material time – is a public policy rule and that it should examine the compliance with that rule of its own motion (see Sabri Güneş v. Turkey [GC], no. 27396/06, § 29, 29 June 2012).
9. According to the well-established case-law of the Court, the six‑month period starts running from the date on which the applicant and/or his or her representative has sufficient knowledge of the final decision in the process of the exhaustion of domestic remedies (see Koç and Tosun v. Turkey (dec.), no. 23852/04, 13 November 2008, and for a more recent reference, Saakashvili v. Georgia (dec.), nos. 6232/20 and 22394/20, § 47, 1 March 2022).
10. The six-month period is interrupted on the date of the introduction of an application. According to Rule 47 of the Rules of Court, as in force since 1 January 2014, the date of introduction of an application for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention is the date on which an application form satisfying the requirements of that Rule is sent to the Court. This means that an application must be signed by the applicant or the applicant’s representative (Rule 47 §§ 1 (c) and 3.1; see also Rule 45 §§ 1 and 2, and paragraphs 1 and 3 of the Practice Direction on the Institution of proceedings), must contain all of the information requested in the relevant parts of the application form and be accompanied by copies of the relevant supporting documents, including those relating to the exhaustion of domestic remedies.
11. Turning to the concrete circumstances of the case, the Court observes that the final domestic decisions were published on 19 November 2018. Since the applicant company did not suggest that a different date should be taken into consideration, the Court finds that in the applicant company’s case the six-month period started to run on that date.
12. The applicant company admitted that application no. 28241/19 lodged on 15 May 2019 (within the six-month time-limit) was a copy that did not contain original signatures and that the second envelope, sent on the same day but received four days after the first one, contained only the original application form without any relevant document. Therefore, neither of the envelopes, taken alone, contained a complete application in compliance with the requirements set out in Rule 47 §§ 1 (c) and 3.1 of the Rules of Court.
13. The applicant company explained that the two envelopes should have been assessed together and that it had dispatched the original application form in a separate envelope only because a copy of all relevant documents, including the original application form, had exceeded the maximum weight allowed for registered letters (two kilograms). In support of their submissions, they provided registration receipts for registered letters nos. RC047322785IT and RC047322799IT sent on 15 May 2019, the notification of receipt for the latter by the Court on 28 May 2019 and two cover letters allegedly accompanying the envelopes. It did not provide a copy of the application form sent on 15 May 2019.
14. According to Rule 47 § 6 (b) the Court may, where it finds it justified, decide that a different date shall be considered to be the date of introduction. However, in the present case, the Court is not satisfied with the justification put forward by the applicant company.
15. The Court notes at the outset that, while the applicant company was required to dispatch a complete application form by post in order to interrupt the running of the six-month time-limit set out in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, it was under no obligation to choose any specific postal service or postal service provider. Moreover, the Court finds it difficult to explain why the original application form could not accompany the documents in the first envelope as did the copy of the application form, which in the absence of any explanation by the applicant company may be presumed to have been the same weight as the original. Therefore, the Court is not convinced that a solid justification existed for sending the application form with the original signature and the relevant documents in two separate envelopes. In this respect, it should be noted that, given the huge amount of correspondence dealt with by the Registry, dispatching a plurality of envelopes greatly increases the risk of their separate treatment and, as in the present case, rejection under Rule 47 of the Rules of the Court.
16. In the case of the applicant company that risk was exacerbated by the fact that the cover letters accompanying the envelopes had identical content and stated that each of them contained “the application dated 15 May 2019 (an original and a copy) together with relevant documents and a DVD containing them”. This information was not only incorrect, since neither of the envelopes contained a complete application form, but also misleading as it did not allow the Court to make any inferences as to the existence of a second envelope intended to complete the case file. As the applicant failed to submit a copy of the application form dispatched on 15 May 2019, the Court may also presume that the applicant company did not clearly explain this circumstance on the application form either.
17. It is the applicant’s duty to cooperate fully in the conduct of the proceedings and, in particular, to be diligent in corresponding with the Court’s Registry (Rule 44A of the Rules of Court; see also paragraph 4 of the Practice Direction on the Institution of proceedings). For the present purposes the implication is that it was the responsibility of the applicant company to submit a properly completed application form and provide the Court with all the information required for processing the application in a timely manner.
18. Therefore, the Court finds that in the present circumstances there is good cause to hold that the date of introduction of the application is 23 December 2019, the date on which a complete application form in accordance with the conditions set out in Rules 45 and 47 of the Rules of Court was finally received at the Registry.
19. 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.
Done in English and notified in writing on 19 December 2024.
Liv Tigerstedt Erik Wennerström
Deputy Registrar President