CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

VÍT ALEXANDER SCHORM CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ These numbers need to be seen against the background of more than 400 applications declared inadmissible by a single judge during the year in 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 face a huge backlog of cases. 2 Only fourteen new applications were communicated to the Czech Government in 2017. As of 31 December 2017, there were 98 applications pending against the Czech Republic. 3 The applications adjudicated in 2017 in the form of public decisions concerned merely two substantive provisions of the Convention law, namely the right to a fair trial safeguarded by Article 6 of the Convention and the protection of property under Article 1 of Protocol no. 1, but with regard to the latter group only just satisfaction which the Court can afford by virtue of Article 41 of the Convention was at stake. The structure of this article is adapted accordingly. Fair trial While the only judgment establishing a breach of Article 6 of the Convention concerns a clear issue of access to court, more important and debatable judgments where no violation The first of them surely was the case of Regner v. the Czech Republic (no. 35289/11, judgment [GC] of 19 September 2017), adjudicated by the Grand Chamber after the previous judgment concluding to an absence of violation given by a Chamber on 2 May 2016. The factual basis of the case consisted in that the applicant occupied an important post in the Czech Ministry of Defence from which he could have been freely removed. The National Security Authority (“the NSA”) decided to revoke his security clearance with reference to a confidential report drawn by an intelligence service. He initiated judicial review of that decision. Throughout the proceedings, administrative courts took knowledge of the report to which the applicant, as an unauthorised person, was denied access since the NSA considered that revealing the report might endanger or seriously compromise the activity of the intelligence service and/or the police. Administrative courts of two levels of jurisdiction held that the contents of the report did warrant the conclusion that the applicant posed a security risk. A few years later, he was found guilty of participation in organised crime that had unduly influenced public tendering at the material time. First, the Court addressed the issue of whether the case fell within the civil limb of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. It replied in the affirmative since the revocation of his security on the HUDOC database of the Court’s case law. Single judge decisions are usually not made in writing. The practice changed in 2017, following a call expressed in the 2015 Brussels declaration, but these decisions, which are not published, are accompanied by a very sober reasoning. 2 However, an unusual fluctuation in the case-load in 2017 was noted with 79,750 applications pending at the beginning of the year, with a peak of 93,200 in June and a drop to 56,250 pending applications at the end of the year, due to a repatriation of large numbers of applications. See Analysis of statistics 2017 (established by the Court in January 2018, p. 5, available at: https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Stats_analysis_2017_ENG.pdf). 3 All these numbers are based either on the annual report of the Government Agent for 2017 ( Zpráva za rok 2017 o stavu vyřizování stížností podaných proti České republice k mezinárodním orgánům ochrany lidských práv , May 2018, available at: http://portal.justice.cz/Justice2/soubor.aspx?id=160741) or on the Analysis of statistics 2017 , cited above, p. 24. 1. was found related to other aspects of ongoing judicial proceedings. 1.1 Use of classified information in administrative court

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