NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

which can be invoked together with Article 13 of the Convention by Article 34 NGOs, are questionable. Article 13 of the Convention is closely related to the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies under Article 35 of the Convention. The Court observed that Article 35 must be applied with some degree of flexibility and without excessive formalism. 1017 The rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies is neither absolute nor capable of being applied automatically. 1018 In reviewing whether the rule has been observed, it is essential to have regard to the particular circumstances of the individual case, namely to take into account not only the existence of formal remedies in the legal system, but also the general legal and political context in a state. 1019 If a national remedy that satisfies Article 13 exists, a person may lodge an application with the Court only when the proceedings at the domestic level failed to reach a satisfactory result. In contrast, if there is no remedy that complies with this Article, the Convention does not impose an obligation to have recourse to it. 1020 No effective remedy will exist, if the scope of review by national courts is so weak that it is unable to properly address the issue, whether or not there has been a breach of the Convention. 1021 This rule is also applicable to non-judicial bodies, as a national remedy need not always be judicial. The Court accepted parliamentary and executive bodies as satisfying Article 13 as well. 1022 Institutional independence requires that the body responsible for making a decision is sufficiently independent from the authority alleged to be answerable for an infringement of the Convention. An accumulation of possible remedies in the national system is an issue that can be seen from a few points of view. On the one hand, the Court should take into account all channels of redress available to the applicant, which may serve as an effective remedy for the purposes of Article 13. On the other hand, the Court could decide that if one remedy is individually adequate to satisfy Article 13 of the Convention, then there is no need to refer to the others. The case-law does to give a clear answer to this. What is important is that the Court evaluates all possible remedies in order to be persuaded that an applicant indeed had no possibility to have its dispute settled otherwise, which thereby resulted in a breach of the Article 13 right. The ‘effectiveness’ of a ‘remedy’ within the meaning of Article 13 of the Convention does not depend on the certainty of a favourable outcome for the applicant. At the same time, the remedy required by Article 13 must be ‘effective’ in practice as well as in law, in the sense that either preventing the alleged violation or its continuation, or of providing adequate redress for any violation that has already occurred. 1023 As stated before, the Court, in its case-law, does not work with Article 13 separately, but only takes it in conjunction with other Articles of the Convention. Therefore, the 1017 Cardot v. France , 19 March 1991, § 34, Series a no. 200. 1018 East West Alliance Limited, cited above, § 145. 1019 Semikhvostov v. Russia , no. 2689/12, § 63, 6 February 2014. 1020 VR-Bank Stuttgart EG v. Austria , no. 28571/06, § 75, 20 May 2010. 1021 HARRIS, 2009, cited above, p. 563. 1022 Klass , cited above, § 21. 1023 Wasserman v. Russia (no. 2) , no. 21071/05, § 45, 10 April 2008.

189