CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

VÍT ALEXANDER SCHORM CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ which generally resulted in awards of low amounts of money. It seems once more that the legal logic should have led to slightly different conclusions, but this time it turned out at the advantage of the applicants. Conclusion Let me make several remarks at the end of this annual chronicle of the Strasbourg Court’s case law regarding the Czech Republic. First, a successful outcome of certain cases does not refute the existence of problems underlying the rejected applications. Hence, in 2017, a number of cases newly communicated to the Czech Government for observations point to issues of access to the highest judicial instances (3 cases), of fairness of criminal proceedings, including the particular issue of the examination of prosecution witnesses by the defence (7+2 cases), as well as of the right to property in situations which tended to be at the margin of the process of restitution duly initiated by the legislature the 1990s after the fall of the Communist regime (1 case). Second, cases adjudicated in 2017 seem to prove rather than disprove that the Court might also be influenced by some prima facie paradoxical extra-legal considerations on the impact of a decision on the applicant’s situation (which we have noted with respect to the adjudication of just satisfaction after a principal judgment in spite of abusive tendencies by the applicants’ or their representatives’ behaviour) or the need to re-open in vain costly and potentially lengthy national proceedings (such as criminal trials with the presence of a foreign element, which may eventually result in new applications being brought before the Court since the conclusion on guilt would be no different from the previous trial). One can also imagine that the Court’s opinion casting doubt on the margin of appreciation of the States when it comes to their national security would not sit well in the current fight against terrorism and with other modern threats posed to contemporary societies. At the same time, national courts were happy to receive a response to their query as to the level of compensation for unlawful rent control, admittedly more than ten years after the end of the period in which that situation existed and when the overwhelming majority of these disputes had already been concluded with finality to the detriment of the landlords concerned; landlords may have won some battles, but lost the war as a whole to the State. Third, globally speaking, the Court’s activity vis-à-vis the Czech Republic has decreased over the recent years both in terms of adjudicated and communicated applications. Since the Court’s docket is opaque and even governments are unaware of applications prior to the moment of their communication for observations or indication of interim measures (which may be followed by formal communication), it is difficult to guess what the national decisions complained of in cases which have not been brought to the attention of governments precisely are. In any event, a series of applications of some degree of importance against the Czech Republic remain pending before the Court, such as cases concerning compulsory vaccination (since the issue was the subject-matter of the European Human Rights Moot Court Competition concluded in Strasbourg in May 2018, it could be expected that the Court is taking steps to decide these cases?), ill-treatment in custody (traditionally these cases take priority) or some other cases in which there has been virtually no movement for more than three years.

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