Communicated on 20 October 2015
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 59230/13
Zdravka VUKRES
against Croatia
lodged on 7 September 2013
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Ms Zdravka Vukres, is a Croatian national, who was born in 1937 and lives in Zagreb.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On 10 July 2002 the Office for Property and Legal Affairs of the City of Zagreb (Grad Zagreb, Gradski ured za imovinsko-pravne poslove) took a decision ordering the administrative authorities to return a formerly confiscated block of flats, including the one the applicant occupied, to its previous owners. Paragraph 3 of the decision in question obliged the owners of these flats to lease them under favourable conditions to the occupiers, for an unlimited period of time, as regulated under the rules of the Specially Protected Tenancies (Sale to Occupier) Act.
The applicant lodged an appeal against the above-mentioned decision.
On 24 October 2005 the Directorate for Civil Law of the Ministry of Justice, acting as a second-instance administrative body, dismissed the applicant’s appeal as ill-founded. The applicant alleges that M.Č. was the head of the unit which dealt with her appeal.
The applicant then brought an administrative action before the Administrative Court. A panel of that court, presided over by M.Č., dismissed the applicant’s action as ill-founded on 12 March 2010.
The applicant then lodged a constitutional complaint.
On 6 March 2013 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s complaint as ill-founded.
On 13 March 2013 the applicant was served with the Constitutional Court’s decision.
COMPLAINT
The applicant complains, under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, that the Administrative Court was not impartial because of the participation of judge M.Č., the former head of the unit of the Ministry of Justice that dealt with the applicant’s appeal.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Was M.Č. the head of the unit of the Ministry for Justice that dealt with the applicants appeal? If so, was the fact that the presiding judge of the panel of the Administrative Court (which decided on the applicant’s administrative complaint) was also the head of the unit of the Ministry of Justice that dealt with the applicant’s appeal amount to a violation of the applicant’s right to a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal, as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
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