CYIL 2015

409

THE CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2014

the applicant with written information. Hence, the involuntary medication was not

established beyond reasonable doubt.

The applicant also alleged that his criminal complaint had not been duly

investigated and the prosecuting authorities had relied on the findings of civil courts.

The Court confirmed that, in the absence of wilful ill-treatment, the State’s positive

obligation to investigate could have been complied with through a civil action as

well. The applicant had filed such an action; the action was debated in adversarial

proceedings and within a reasonable time. In consequence, there was no violation

of procedural obligations stemming from Article 3 or 13 of the Convention either.

3. Property

Although it is usually supposed that a problem consists in money only at first,

let us justify why we mention property at the end, despite the fact that the Court’s

judgment on rent control in the Czech Republic would have been a major event if it

had been delivered much earlier.

When the Court adopted pilot judgments

in the case of

Hutten-Czapska v. Poland

(no. 35014/97, judgment of 22 February 2005 and judgment [GC] of 19 June 2006),

Czech landlords felt encouraged by such a development and started to file a number of

applications

against persisting rent control, which had been declared unconstitutional

several times by the Constitutional Court, basically for not taking into account the

impossibility of landlords to accumulate money during the Communist regime to be

invested in the houses, and remained in force, as it was impossible to increase rents.

The Constitutional Court also enabled landlords to request a rent increase via a court

decision, this legal avenue being further supplemented by a possibility to sue the State

for compensation for involuntary limitation of the right to property. Parliament finally

adopted an act allowing landlords gradually and unilaterally to increase rents since

2007 and repeatedly amended the relevant provisions of the Civil Code, too.

The Court initially intended to respond to the call of Czech landlords by a

pilot-judgment procedure and communicated a first group of applications to the

Government in 2007. Without any decision on the admissibility of the first group, it

went on to communicate another group of cases in 2011. After the Court’s decision

in the cases of

Vomočil

and

Art 38, a.s. v. the Czech Republic

(nos. 38817/04 and

1458/07, decision of 5 March 2013)

terminating the first group, it became apparent

that the Court not only required the applicants to exhaust domestic remedies,

including a constitutional appeal, in spite of doubts as to their effectiveness, but had

For a later definition of the pilot-judgment procedure, see Rule 61 of the Rules of Court.

In total there were several thousands of applicants, the overwhelming majority of them having only

signed a form and joined an organised way of submitting the case of Czech rent control to the Court.

The first amongst relevant acts was Act no. 107/2006 on unilateral rent increases.

A voluminous overview of national legislation and case law is annexed to this decision.