Equality before Courts, Fair Trial and Undue Delay of Judicial Proceedings

Facts

The author is a Slovak national who requested access to an application made by the State party to the European Court of Human Rights for review of a judgment in a case. However, the Ministry of Justice denied his request because it did not consider it public information, as it concerned the decision-making of a court. The author lodged an administrative action before a regional court, and afterwards a complaint to the Constitutional Court for the excessive delay in the proceedings but his complaint was dismissed as manifestly unfounded. The author claims herein that his rights under article 14(1) (equality before courts) read with article 2(3) (right to an effective remedy) and article 26 (equality before the law and equal protection) have been violated due to the Constitutional Court’s failure to serve him with written observations, its inadmissibility decisions, and excessive delays in the proceedings.

Admissibility

The State party noted that the author himself contributed to the length of the proceedings by requesting for a suspension of the proceedings. The Committee considered that the author failed to explain and substantiate why the proceedings amounted to arbitrariness and denial of justice and therefore held the part of the complaint under article 14(1) regarding the Constitutional Court’s violation of his right to a fair trial, failure to transmit the observations of the Chairperson of the Court, and not respecting his right to an adversarial proceeding, to be inadmissible.

As regards the claim under article 14(1) read with article 2(3), the Committee considered that the author’s repeated procedural motions unnecessarily extended the proceedings as some of them stood little chance of success. It found the author’s claims as not sufficiently substantiated and amounted to an abuse of submission, therefore deeming the communication inadmissible.

By: Smrithi Ramakrishnan