Transpetrol, a.s., v. Slovakia (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 146

November 2011

Transpetrol, a.s., v. Slovakia (dec.) - 28502/08

Decision 15.11.2011 [Section III]

Article 34

Victim

Unity of interests of applicant company and respondent Government: inadmissible

Facts – The applicant is a joint-stock company traiding in oil. The application concerns the fairness of proceedings before the Constitutional Court regarding the ownership of shares in the company. At the material time, the State had a majority shareholding in the company. The company is now wholly owned by the State.

Law – Article 34: The Court had first to examine whether the applicant company had standing in the proceedings before it. The applicant company had features of both a “governmental” and a “non-governmental organisation”. On the one hand, it was a commercial joint-stock company operating exclusively under the private-law regime, governed by the Commercial Code, with no privileges or special rights or rules concerning enforcement of judgments against it. It was subject to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and did not participate in the exercise of any governmental power. In the past, it had been partly owned by private entities. On the other hand, however, the State had always been a majority shareholder and at present was the sole shareholder of the applicant company. On account of its strategic importance for the national economy the applicant company used to be excluded by law from privatisation. It had been recognised in the domestic law as having the character of a “natural monopoly” and had an unrivalled market position in Slovakia. However, rather than weighing those elements against each other, the Court was of the opinion that the decisive considerations for the determination of the applicant company’s locus standi lay in the assessment of the overall procedural and substantive context of the application and of its underlying facts. The question of ownership of shares in the applicant company primarily concerned the rights and interests of other shareholders rather than the rights and interests of the applicant company itself. The Court found no indication that the application strived to further interests other than those that were concurrently interests of the State. In particular, the State had joined the applicant company as an intervener for the defendant in separate proceedings involving the determination of essentially the same issues as those in the proceedings contested in the instant application. The Government had also sought to challenge the judgment of the Constitutional Court at issue in the instant case in two applications the Ministry of the Economy had lodged with the Court, which had been declared inadmissible as incompatible ratione personae. The Government had been represented in those applications by the same lawyer as the applicant company in the instant case. Those circumstances reflectedthe unity of interests of the applicant company and the Government.

Conclusion: inadmissible (incompatible ratione personae).

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

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