NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

The Court observed that the interpretation of the applicable provision by the domestic courts had been reasonably foreseeable. The applicant, as a construction company, should have known that in omitting to submit the new plans for prior authorisation it ran the risk of incurring the statutory penalty. Moreover, the provision in question stated clearly that the amount of the fine payable was equivalent to 100% of the value of the work carried out. Accordingly, there was no appearance of a breach of Article 7 and the application was declared manifestly ill-founded. An applicant company also invoked, inter alia, a violation of Article 7 of the Convention in the case of Aktoploikes Grammes Thiras v. Ukraine . 685 In 2000, it entered into a contract with a Ukrainian joint-stock company, P. Under the contract, P. was to carry out repair work on a vessel owned by the applicant company, which was to be done in a Ukrainian port. Due to non-compliance with customs regulations, the customs service seized the vessel. By a decision on 3 April 2002, the Leninskyy District Court ordered the confiscation of the vessel as an object with which customs regulations were violated. On the basis of this judicial decision, the bailiffs’ service of Ukraine put the vessel on the seizure list. The applicant company did not appeal against the decision of 3 April 2002 and immediately instituted proceedings against the bailiffs. The Court observed that the proceedings instituted by the applicant company against the body that was entrusted only with the enforcement of a court decision were inappropriate from the very beginning. Therefore, the present complaint was introduced out of the six-month time limit and was rejected as inadmissible. After this analysis of the main case-law on Article 7 of the Convention in respect of Article 34 NGOs, we may conclude that they use this right to a limited extent. This can be explained by the fact that corporate criminal liability is a relatively new phenomenon in legal theory. Moreover, the biggest ‘application suppliers’, such as Russia 686 and Turkey, 687 do not have criminal liability for legal persons in their legislation. Ukraine adopted a law on corporate criminal liability only in 2013 and it came into force on 1 September 2014. 688 Furthermore, many other the CoE members introduced the legislation of this kind only after 2010. 689 The following part of the book will address the right to respect for private and family life as guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention. The subsequent text will answer the question of whether Article 34 NGOs enjoy the right to family life in particular. 685 Aktoploikes Grammes Thiras v. Ukraine (dec.), no. 21200/04, 20 January 2015. 686 InMarch 2015, the Parliament of the RussianFederation received a draft lawon corporate criminal laibility. See accessed 20 July 2015. 687 Overview 1959-2014 ECHR, p. 3. URL: accessed 20 July 2015. 688 On 23May 2013, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted the Law of Ukraine No. 314-VII “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine (regarding the implementation of the Action Plan on the liberalization of the EU visa regime for Ukraine on the liability of legal persons)”. The Law came into force on September 1, 2014. //Vidomosti Verhovnoy Rady, 2014, No. 12, Art.183. 689 In the Czech republic the act on criminal liability of legal entities and proceedings against legal entities No. 418/2011 Coll. became effective on 1 January 2012. Similar laws were adopted in Slovakia – 2010, Azejbarjan – 2012. See TYMOFEYEVA, A. Some guarantees …, cited above, p. 159-160.

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