Information Note on the Court’s case-law No.
September 1993
Istituto di Vigilanza v. Italy (preliminary objections) - 13567/88
Judgment 22.9.1993
Article 35
Article 35-1
Six month period
Length of civil proceedings: preliminary objection allowed
[This summary is extracted from the Court’s official reports (Series A or Reports of Judgments and Decisions). Its formatting and structure may therefore differ from the Case-Law Information Note summaries. It also covers the following judgments of 22 September 1993: Figus Milone v. Italy (13686/88) and Goisis v. Italy (15310/89).]
THE GOVERNMENT'S PRELIMINARY OBJECTION (request bringing case before Court filed out of time)
By the terms of the French text of Article 47 of the Convention, the Court may only "être saisie d'une affaire" (be seised of a case) within the period of three months provided for in Article 32.
In order to seise a court, it was not sufficient to decide to seise it. The decision had to be implemented.
Any other reading of Article 32 § 1 and Article 47 would be likely to produce - as regards one of the conditions to be satisfied when applying to the Commission itself - results contrary to the letter and spirit of Article 26 in fine and to the case-law established in the matter from the very beginning.
The Commission had exceeded, albeit by only one day, the time allowed it - no special circumstance of a nature to suspend the running of time or justify its starting to run afresh was apparent from the file - hence inadmissibility of the request bringing the case before the Court as it had been made out of time.
Conclusion: objection allowed (unanimously in all three cases).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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