Inadmissible communication on equality before the law and non-discrimination in legal proceedings to recognize the citizenship as a precondition for denationalization of property

Facts

The authors, later represented by their sons, are two Austrian and an Austro-French citizens, who filed a claim for the denationalization of the castle complexes and their family villa, all located in Slovenia, in accordance with the Denationalization Act. These properties belonged to their ancestors and were nationalized in 1945 by the local confiscation committees after the family fled the country during the Second World War. The Ministry of Culture rejected the denationalization claim on the grounds that none of the legal successors or their wives met the Slovenian citizenship requirement contained in the Denationalization Act. The authors exhausted judicial remedies up to the Constitutional Court of Slovenia, however, to no vail. They claimed to be victims of a violation of their rights under article 2, equality before the law, article 26, non-discrimination, and article 24 (3), right to a nationality, of the Covenant by Slovenia during the legal proceedings regarding the recognition of the citizenship of their ancestors, as a preliminary question in the context of the denationalization of their ancestors’ properties. The authors also claimed that their right to property was violated.

Admissibility

The Committee noted that the authors applied to the European Court of Human Rights, which rejected all the applications as inadmissible by single-judge decisions. The Committee recalled its jurisprudence that the inadmissibility decision amounts to an “examination”, when it entails at least the implicit consideration of the merits of a complaint. Taking into account that the claims submitted to the Committee are of a different nature and scope than the ones presented to the ECHR, and that the single-judge decisions did not include any considerations of the merits of a complaint, the Committee did not consider itself precluded from examining the authors’ claims under articles 2 and 26 of the Covenant on the ground that the same matter has already been considered under another procedure of international investigation or settlement. At the same time the Committee considered that the authors had not exhausted all available domestic remedies, as the claims of discrimination have not been made from the outset of proceedings, thereby not affording the national authorities the opportunity to address the alleged violations of the Covenant first. Further, the Committee considered the authors’ claims regarding the right to property, and the acquisition of citizenship of a specific State, to be incompatible ratione materiae, as not guaranteed under the Covenant. Finally, the Committee was not in a position to conclude that the administrative organs or domestic courts acted arbitrarily in deciding the authors’ case or that their decisions amounted to a denial of justice.

Accordingly, the Committee concluded that the authors’ claims under articles 2 and 26 of the Covenant are inadmissible as the authors had not exhausted all available domestic remedies and that the communication was also insufficiently substantiated for the purposes of admissibility.

By: Anna Gorodetskaya