Information Note on the Court’s case-law 43
June 2002
Zehnalová and Zehnal v. the Czech Republic (dec.) - 38621/97
Decision 14.5.2002 [Section II]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Lack of facilities allowing handicapped persons access to buildings open to the public: inadmissible
The first applicant is physically disabled and the second applicant is her husband. In their home town, many public buildings are not equipped with access facilities for the disabled. In December 1994, the applicant informed the Municipal Office and District Office that these buildings did not comply with the relevant legislation. The District Office replied that the approval certificates of the 219 buildings concerned were to be reviewed. In view of the delay in initiating the review procedure, the applicant asked the Ministry of Economic Affairs to conduct a review on its own initiative. The ministry replied that, in accordance with the law, the review would be conducted by the District Office, but did not set any deadline. The District Office rejected or took no action on most of the applicants’ requests. Nevertheless, improvements were made to a number of the buildings in question following negotiations between the municipality and the owners. In November 1995, the applicants applied to the regional court to be exempted from costs and to have a lawyer appointed in order to prepare the applications relating to the review of the approval certificates which the Municipal Office had issued for 174 buildings. Their application was dismissed as having no chance of success. The applicants appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined jurisdiction, pointing out that the regional courts’ decision was not open to appeal. In July 1996, the applicants applied to the Constitutional Court, complaining that many public buildings and buildings open to the public did not comply with the conditions laid down by decree regarding access facilities for the disabled. They also maintained that the procedure for reviewing the approval certificates had not been properly carried out by the authorities. In March 1997, the Constitutional Court dismissed their application.
Inadmissible under Article 8: The positive obligations deriving from this article might involve the adoption of measures designed to secure respect for private life even in the sphere of relations between individuals themselves. However, since the notion of respect was not precisely defined, states enjoyed a wide margin of appreciation. A state had obligations of this type where a direct and immediate link was established between measures sought by an applicant and the latter’s private and/or family life. In the Botta v. Italy judgment, Article 8 had been declared inapplicable to situations concerning interpersonal relations of such broad and indeterminate scope that there could be no conceivable link between measures that the state was urged to take and the applicant’s private life. In the instant case, it was necessary to determine the limits to the applicability of Article 8 and the boundary between the rights guaranteed by the Convention and the social rights guaranteed by the European Social Charter. Owing to the constant changes in European society, national governments were required to make increasing commitments in order to remedy existing shortcomings and, as a result, the state intervened increasingly in individuals’ private lives. However, the sphere of state intervention and the notion of private life did not always coincide, the scope of the state’s positive obligations being more limited. In the instant case, Article 8 could not be applied each time the first applicant’s everyday life was disrupted, but only in the exceptional cases in which the lack of access to an establishment interfered with her right to personal development and her right to establish and maintain relations with other human beings and the outside world. However, she had failed to demonstrate the special link between lack of access to the buildings which she had mentioned and the particular needs of her private life. In view of the large number of buildings mentioned, one might legitimately doubt that she required access to them every day and that there was a direct and immediate link between the measures which the state was urged to take and her private life. In addition, by way of a subsidiary argument, the national authorities had not remained inactive, and the situation in the applicants’ home town had improved in the last few years, as they themselves admitted. Article 8 was accordingly inapplicable in this case: incompatible ratione materiae.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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