CYIL vol. 8 (2017)

CYIL 8 ȍ2017Ȏ THE CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2016 THE CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2016 Vít Alexander Schorm* Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide a short overview of the European Court of Human Rights’ activities towards the Czech Republic in 2016. The year of reference is characterised by a limited number of delivered judgments and decisions and only two instances of violations established by the Court. Resumé: Účelem článku je poskytnout krátký přehled aktivit Evropského soudu pro lid- ská práva vůči České republice v roce 2016. Referenční rok je charakteristický omezeným počtem vydaných rozsudků a rozhodnutí a pouze dvěma případy porušení Úmluvy, která shledal Soud. Key words: human rights; European Court of Human Rights; right to respect for private life and home; right to security and liberty; right to adversarial proceedings; effective domestic remedies. On the Author: JUDr. Vít Alexander Schorm has been the Agent of the Government of the Czech Republic before the European Court of Human Rights since 2002. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno in 1996, studied public comparative law at the Université de Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne (D.E.A. in 1998) and is an alumnus of the French École nationale d’administration (2002). Introduction This annual contribution aims at providing a short overview of the European Court of Human Rights’ most relevant activities with regard to the Czech Republic as a high contracting party to the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”) in the respective previous year – 2016 in the circumstances. I was usually forced to say that there was not much to say, except for a couple of interesting judgments, and expressed a hope that this would change in the next year. The truth is that a judgment of non-violation or inadmissibility decision seems a priori to be a non-event, in spite of all the labour of the Government Agent’s Office behind the success of the State’s defence in the proceedings before the Court. In 2016, the Court delivered two judgments in which it established a violation of Convention rights or freedoms and three judgments with a negative outcome for the applicants, together with ten formal inadmissibility decisions. 1 Nine cases ended in a friendly settlement. These numbers need to be seen against the background of more than 300 applications declared inadmissible by a single judge during the year of reference. In sum, the Czech Republic, unlike a dozen of high case account States, does not pose any problem to the Convention mechanism which has, however, continued to * The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not correspond with the official position of the Government of the Czech Republic and do not bind this State Authority in any way. 1 Committee, Chamber or Grand Chamber admissibility decisions formulated with reasoning and published on the HUDOC database of the Court’s case law. Single judge decisions are usually not made in writing. The practice is supposed to change in 2017, following a call expressed in the 2015 Brussels declaration.

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