EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION / Alla Tymofeyeva (ed.)

5

X. Y. v. the CZECH REPUBLIC

13. In the following parts of these Observations, the Government shall con- sider the admissibility of the application as a whole and in relation to each of the proceedings, and then they shall consider the merits of parts of the application. A) O N THE ADMISSIBILITY (i) On the admissibility of the application as a whole 14. The Government leave it to the Court’s consideration whether, in the light of its recent case law ( Bock v. Germany , no. 22051/07, decision of 19 Janu- ary 2010), the application should be declared inadmissible for abuse of the right of application under Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention. 15. The case under consideration involves a fine amounting to CZK 2,000 (i.e., approximately EUR 55 at an exchange rate of CZK 36.245/EUR on DD/MM/YY, i.e., on the day of delivery of the decision in question) for a minor offence against ci tizens’ coexistence ( občanské soužití ), which the Applicant al- legedly committed by throwing food from the freezer, cosmetics from the bath- room and a gym ball out of a window of a flat on the eighth floor in Prague 4 at night, thereby causing damage to his ex-wife amounting to CZK 499 (approxi- mately EUR 13.6 at an exchange rate of CZK 36.720/EUR on DD/MM/YY, i.e., on the day of the damage) (see the Prague 4 District Office ’s decision to reject the petition for the reopening of the proceedings of DD/MM/YY). 16. The Applicant deposited his statements regarding the above-mentioned incident with the Police of the Czech Republic and in a letter addressed to the Prague 4 District Office dated DD/MM/YY (see the Applicant’s petition for the reopening of the proceedings of DD/MM/YY) and after that he ceased, of his own will, to communicate with the administrative authority and collect the served doc- uments (see the Prague 4 District Office ’s decision to reject the petition for the reopening of the proceedings of DD/MM/YY), although those documents were served on him in accordance with the law (see below). 17. His behaviour, by which he apparently tried to avoid responsibility for the above unlawful acts, and his subsequent filing of various remedies led to the fact that the whole matter – a night-time quarrel between divorced spouses – had to be further dealt with, from various perspectives, by administrative authorities at two levels, courts at all three levels of the judiciary, the Constitutional Court and, eventually, the Court in Strasbourg. 18. The Government are convinced that the gravity of the case in question is totally incommensurate with the number of domestic and international bodies that have had to deal with the case. Particularly if we take into account the current overload of the Court, including the large number of applications concerning seri- ous violations of the rights protected by the Convention, there is no choice but to ask, together with the dissenting Judges in the judgment in the case of Micallef v. Malta (no. 17056/06, Grand Chamber judgment of 15 October 2009, point 1 of the joint dissenting opinion of Judges Costa, Jungwiert, Kovler and Fura), whether

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EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION