THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 31979/04
Yuriy Pavlovich SOROKIN
against Russia
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 24 January 2017 as a Committee composed of:
Helena Jäderblom, President,
Dmitry Dedov,
Branko Lubarda, judges,
and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 6 July 2004,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Yuriy Pavlovich Sorokin, is a Russian national who was born in 1938 and lives in St Petersburg.
2. The Russian Government (“the Government”) were represented by Mr. G. Matyushkin, Representative of the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human Rights.
A. The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. The applicant worked in a federal state unitary enterprise, Morfizpribor (ФГУП ЦНИИ «Морфизприбор») (hereinafter “the company).
5. On 24 June 1997 a labour disputes commission issued a decision requiring the company to: (i) reinstate the applicant at work; (ii) pay his salary arrears for 1995-96; and (iii) resume supplementary monthly payments to him. Since the defendant did not comply with that decision, a writ of execution was issued and submitted to the Bailiffs’ Service.
6. According to the Government, on 13 July 1997 the company issued order no. 1485/k, by which the applicant was reinstated at work as of 25 March 1996.
7. As to the financial awards, the Government submitted that on 20 October 1997 the company had transferred to the Bailiffs’ Service’s account a sum corresponding to its entire debt to the applicant. On 19 December 1997 that sum had been paid to the applicant.
8. In August 1998 the applicant was dismissed from work again.
9. In December 1999 the applicant complained to the St Petersburg Department of the Ministry of Justice about the inactivity of the bailiffs, namely their failure to issue a decision to initiate enforcement proceedings.
10. In response to his complaint in December 1999, the applicant was told that no enforcement proceedings were pending and that the situation would be remedied.
11. On 18 March 2002 the Petrogradskiy District Court of St Petersburg (“the District Court”) ordered the bailiffs to “make enforcement file no. 6056/97 comply with the Instruction on the processing of writs of execution by the Bailiffs’ Service”. The judgment became final on 14 May 2002. On 26 August 2003 the Kirovskiy Bailiffs’ Office of St Petersburg refused to enforce that judgment, because the District Court had not indicated when the judgment of 18 March 2002 had become final.
12. On 27 October 2003 the District Court declared the bailiffs’ failure to issue a decision to initiate enforcement proceedings in respect of the decision of 24 June 1997 unlawful.
B. Relevant domestic law
13. The relevant provisions and case-law governing unitary companies with the right of economic control are described in the judgments of Liseytseva and Maslov v. Russia (nos. 39483/05 and 40527/10, §§ 54-127, 9 October 2014), and Samsonov v. Russia (dec.) (no. 2880/10, 16 September 2014).
THE LAW
14. The applicant complained about the non-enforcement of the decision of 24 June 1997 and about the lack of an effective remedy in that respect. He relied on Article 6 § 1 and Article 13 of the Convention, which, in so far as relevant, read as follows:
Article 6
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations ..., everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by [a] ... tribunal ...”
Article 13
“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [the] Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
A. The parties’ submissions
15. The Government submitted that the decision of 24 June 1997 had been fully enforced. They further maintained that the debts of the company in the present case were not attributable to the State. Accordingly, the judgments in the applicant’s favour should be regarded as having been issued against a private company. In line with the Court’s case-law, the authorities had provided the requisite assistance to the applicant in his efforts to have the court awards enforced. This had ultimately led to the execution of the judgment. The domestic courts, in holding that the enforcement file did not comply with the applicable instructions, had only dealt with the formal aspect of the enforcement proceedings. They had not assessed the effectiveness of the assistance which the bailiffs had provided to the applicant.
16. The applicant maintained his claims.
B. The Court’s assessment
1. The Court’s case-law
17. The relevant case-law regarding the State’s responsibility for the debts of unitary enterprises with the right of economic control is summarised in the judgment of Liseytseva and Maslov, cited above, §§ 183‑92, and the decision of Samsonov, cited above. The Court held that, in order to decide on the operational and institutional independence of a given municipal unitary enterprise with the right of economic control, the Court had to assess the nature of the enterprise’s functions and the degree of actual State or municipal authorities’ involvement in the management of the enterprise’s assets.
18. The decision of the labour disputes commission can be equated to a court decision, and the State bears responsibility for its non-execution (Romashov v. Ukraine, no. 67534/01, § 41, 27 July 2004).
19. With regard to the non-enforcement of domestic judgments, the Court has consistently held that, in situations where the party liable to pay is a State, its approach is that the judicial award should be enforced fully and without any unjustified delay (see Burdov v. Russia, no. 59498/00, § 35, ECHR 2002‑III). In contrast to the obligation of a High Contracting Party to comply expediently with judgments against it, with regard to enforcement of a final and binding judicial decision against a private party, a State’s obligations are limited to providing a creditor with the necessary legal assistance and ensuring the effective operation of the procedure (see Fuklev v. Ukraine, no. 71186/01, § 84, 7 June 2005; Anokhin v. Russia (dec.), no. 25867/02, 31 May 2007; and Kunashko v. Russia, no. 36337/03, § 38, 17 December 2009). In the context of the Russian legal system, the principles cited above are primarily applicable to the Bailiffs’ Service, which is required to perform its functions diligently and thoroughly with a view to ensuring the effective execution of judgments issued against “private” defendants (Pelipenko v. Russia, no. 69037/10, § 50, 2 October 2012).
2. Application to the present case
20. The company was incorporated as a federal state unitary enterprise under domestic law. With regard to the criteria developed by the Court in the case of Liseytseva and Maslov, the Court notes that, in the present case, the applicant did not allege that the company had exercised any public functions or provided services of vital importance. Nor did he maintain that the State had interfered with the company’s activities, either by issuing compulsory instructions or ordering the transfer of its assets to other companies (see, by contrast, Liseytseva and Maslov, cited above, §§ 208‑19).
21. In the light of the above, the Court finds that the company did enjoy sufficient institutional and operational independence from the authorities. Accordingly, the decision in the applicant’s favour should be regarded as having been issued against a private company, and the State’s responsibility for the company’s failure to comply with the judgment should be assessed in the light of the principles relating to the non-enforcement of judgments against private parties (see Kunashko, cited above, § 38-40, and Samsonov, cited above, §§ 82-85).
22. It remains to be established whether there were substantive shortcomings in the bailiffs’ assistance of the applicant in relation to enforcement proceedings. In this respect, the Court observes that on 24 June 1997 the applicant obtained a decision against the company by which the latter was to reinstate him at work and pay his salary arrears (see paragraph 5 above). The Government submitted that the decision had been enforced on 13 July 1997 (in respect of the applicant’s reinstatement) and 19 December 1997 (in respect of the payment of his salary arrears). The Court notes that the Government’s submission is corroborated by copies of relevant documents. It further notes that the applicant did not comment on that information.
23. In these circumstances, the Court finds it established that the decision was duly enforced and that the overall length of the enforcement proceedings was about six months, which was not excessively long (see, by contrast, Kunashko, cited above, where the proceedings lasted eight years, and Pelipenko, cited above, § 44, where the proceedings lasted ten years).
24. Furthermore, the Court accepts the Government’s argument that, although the bailiffs failed to fully abide by domestic law requirements, this did not impact the effectiveness of the enforcement proceedings, and ultimately led to the execution of the decision in the applicant’s favour.
25. It follows that the complaint 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.
Done in English and notified in writing on 16 February 2017.
Fatoş AracıHelena Jäderblom
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy