NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

has been introduced by “The Sunday Times as a group of journalists”. The name ‘Sunday Times’ thus simply describes the group of individuals who are claiming that they themselves, as journalists, were victims of a breach of Article 10. In these circumstances, the Commission found that the second applicant also falls within the categories of petitioners mentioned in Article 25 of the Convention provided that the individual members of the group have been identified. 190 From this statement by the Commission, we can deduce that one of the requirements for a group of individuals under the Convention is that members of the group must be identifiable. It is expected that, for recognition of the group of individuals, each individual of this group is obliged to lodge a complaint under the Convention. This means that in practice the Court only handles applications from a few individuals or NGOs. Usually, when there is a number of the applicants with similar issues, in accordance with Rule 42 (formerly Rule 43) of the Rules of Court titled Joinder and simultaneous examination of applications, the chamber of the Court may, either at the request of the parties or of its own motion, order the joinder of two or more applications. 191 For example, in the case of Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev v. Russia, on 2 July 2013 the Court’s Chamber decided to join the two cases of both applicants. 192 In the case of Bernh Larsen Holding AS and Others v. Norway , the applicant company submitted: “The protection afforded to a private company under Article 8 should not be viewed as limited to legal persons but should apply also to a group of individuals striving to achieve common goals.Thus, the protection of people working for a company – as a group – against arbitrary interference in their common effort, ought to be considered as inherent in the same protection afforded to a company.” 193 The Court ruled that there had been no violation of the Convention. The organisation, not the group of individuals, lodged the request, and therefore, the Court did not mention the group of individuals as a separate applicant and consequently did not rule on any of their rights. Nevertheless, in the dissenting opinion to this judgment, judges Berro-Lefèvre and Laffranque, pointed out: “We consider that the protection afforded to legal persons in this regard must also entail the consideration that people working for such companies are, as a group, afforded protection from arbitrary interference . Employees and other people working for the applicant companies must also have such protection, where professional and private correspondence and a large volume of work-related documents, irrelevant to tax-audit purposes, are taken by the authorities and lie open for review in their premises.” In their opinion, the domestic law did not indicate with sufficient clarity the scope and manner of exercise of the authorities’ discretion to seize documentation of the company, and consequently, there was a violation of Article 8 of the Convention. Following their line of reasoning, it is possible to presuppose that if the group of employees of the Bernh Larsen Holding AS, Kver AS and Increased Oil Recovery AS lodged the application, they could win Ibid. 191 Rules of Court of 1 July 2014, Strasbourg: Registry of the Court. Practice Directions amended on 29 September 2014, p. 20. 192 Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev v. Russia , nos. 11082/06 and 13772/05, § 6, 25 July 2013. 193 Bernh Larsen Holding AS and Others v. Norway , no. 24117/08, § 97, 14 March 2013. 190

45