Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 125
December 2009
Wieczorek v. Poland - 18176/05
Judgment 8.12.2009 [Section IV]
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1
Peaceful enjoyment of possessions
Revocation of disability pension on the grounds that the applicant was no longer unfit for work: no violation
Facts – The applicant received a disability pension from 1985 until 2000, when the Social Insurance Authority brought proceedings to reassess her medical condition and concluded that she was no longer entitled to such a pension since she was no longer unfit for work. On appeal, a regional court granted the applicant the disability pension for a fixed period of two years, ending on 1 January 2003. The applicant’s further appeal was dismissed and her application for legal aid to lodge a subsequent cassation appeal was also dismissed on the grounds that the case was not so complex as to warrant legal assistance.
Law – Article 6 § 1 of the Convention: The applicant’s request for legal aid was refused on the ground that her case had not warranted professional legal assistance for the purposes of a further appeal. In so finding, the domestic court failed to refer in any way to the legal arguments that had been advanced by the applicant concerning a matter which had raised serious questions of interpretation before the domestic courts and was, in fact, clarified by the Supreme Court only after the applicant’s case had already been decided. The conclusion that legal assistance would be unnecessary – in particular in the absence of any analysis of whether the cassation appeal offered any prospects of success – did not therefore seem justified.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1: The social-security system in Poland was based on the principle of solidarity and the basic level of social-insurance benefits, including disability pensions, were paid from a single fund financed by various compulsory contributions from employees and employers. Individual entitlement to a disability pension was based on a number of conditions which had to be met by the claimant, including inability to continue paid employment on grounds of ill-health. However, since a person’s medical condition was subject to change with the passage of time, the Court considered it permissible for States to take measures to reassess the condition of persons receiving disability pensions with a view to establishing whether they continued to be unfit for work, provided that the procedure was in conformity with the law and attended by sufficient procedural safeguards. If entitlement to a disability pension was maintained permanently, without regard to a possible change in the condition of the beneficiary, this would not only result in unjust enrichment, but also in an improper allocation of public funds. In the applicant’s case, the Social Insurance Authority’s decisions were subject to judicial review before two instances of special social-insurance courts offering her full procedural guarantees. The applicant had had recourse to that procedure and had been able to present her arguments to those courts. Further, it was important also to note that the applicant had not been totally divested of her only means of subsistence, since the regional court had granted her a temporary two-year disability pension and she had not been required to pay back any amounts she had received prior to the date of the revocation of her pension. For these reasons, the Court concluded that a fair balance had been struck between the demands of the general interest and the applicant’s property rights and that the burden on the applicant was neither disproportionate nor excessive.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 2,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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