CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

CYIL 15 ȍ2024Ȏ CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2023 Court’s existing case-law. The Grand Chamber’s judgments generally carry with them the highest key significance; they address new issues in the Court’s case-law. This is also the case with regard to two judgments of the Grand Chamber delivered by the Court against the Czech Republic: Grosam v. the Czech Republic 9 and FU QUAN, s.r.o. v. the Czech Republic . 10 Seven judgments have been assigned a significance level of 2, which denotes judgments which, while not making a significant contribution to the clarification, development, or modification of the Court’s case-law, go beyond the mere application of existing case-law. These were the judgments in Pařízek v. Czech Republic , 11 Janáček v. Czech Republic , 12 X v. Czech Republic , 13 Jírová and Others v. Czech Republic , 14 P. N. v. Czech Republic , 15 Kubát and Others v. Czech Republic , 16 and V v. Czech Republic . 17 For practising lawyers, however, it is not necessarily the significance of the decision in terms of the development of the Court’s case-law that is determinative, but rather the legal issue addressed by the Court in the decision. In the following overview, therefore, we selected and discuss the most important decisions according to the topics addressed by the Court. 1.1 Judgments of the Grand Chamber Although the two judgments of the Grand Chamber on the merits concern quite different issues, 18 the fundamental question addressed by the Grand Chamber of the Court was similar: what constitutive and procedural elements define a complaint on which the Court is empowered to decide. In Grosam, the applicant argued that, in view of the composition of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Administrative Court, in particular the alleged lack of expertise and independence of the lay assessors, that Chamber could not be considered the “highest tribunal” within the meaning of Article 2(2) of Protocol No 7 to the Convention and that its decision must therefore be subject to appeal. However, a Chamber of the Court reformulated this argumentation to mean that the applicant was in fact arguing that the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Administrative Court could not, in view of the lack of expertise and independence of the lay assessors, be regarded as a “tribunal” within the meaning of Article 6 of the Convention. In that spirit, it put questions to the respondent Government. The applicant subsequently endorsed that reasoning as his own. In its judgment of 23 June 2022, the Chamber of the Court found a violation of Article 6 of the Convention while accepting the applicant’s, or rather its own, argumentation that the disciplinary charges against the applicant had not been decided by a tribunal within the meaning of the Convention. It reached that conclusion by the narrowest majority of four

9 Application no. 19750/13, judgment of 1 June 2023. 10 Application no. 24827/14, judgment of 1 June 2023. 11 Application no. 76286/14, judgment of 12 January 2023. 12 See footnote 2. 13 Application no. 64886/19, judgment of 30 March 2023. 14 Application no. 66015/17, judgment of 13 April 2023. 15 Application no. 44684/14, judgment of 8 June 2023. 16 Application no. 61721/19 et al, Judgment of 22 June 2023. 17 See footnote 3.

18 The case of Grosam v. the Czech Republic concerned the procedural aspects of the disciplinary proceedings against the enforcement officer. The application FU QUAN, s.r.o. deals with the issue of compensation for the loss of value of property seized during criminal proceedings.

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