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

2. ON ADMISSIBILITY IN GENERAL Before giving assessment of the merits of the case, the Court first examines whether the application is admissible. This means that the case must comply with certain requirements set out in Article 35 of the Convention. If the conditions are not satisfied, the application will be rejected. This decision is final and cannot be reversed. In accordance with Articles 27 and 28 of the Convention such decision is delivered by a single-judge formation or a committee of three judges. The single judge decides on admissibility of simple cases, whereas the committee examines more complex inadmissible cases. The three-judge committees may also declare an application admissible and even render a judgment on the merits, if the case is straightforward and the subject matter is well-established in the case-law of the Court. Usually, if the application or one of the complaints is declared admissible, the Court will encourage the parties to reach a friendly settlement. If the settlement cannot be reached, the Court will determine whether or not there has been a violation of the Convention. In this stage the decision is given by Chambers of the Court. The Chambers will check the merits of individual applications. They will also be the first body to examine an application lodged with the Court by the States. When a case to be decided by the Chamber raises a serious question of interpretation of the Convention, it is customarily transferred to the Grand Chamber. According to the Court’s statistics, however, from 90% to more than 95% of the applications lodged with it are rejected without being examined on the merits due to the fact that they do not satisfy the criteria of admissibility laid down by the Convention. These shocking figures show that it is of crucial importance to explain to persons who would like to submit their complaints to the Court, what are the main criteria on which the Court bases its analysis of the applications. This would give an applicant a basic understanding of why his or her application could be declared inadmissible. The C dable for non-specialists by introducing the Practical guide on admissibility criteria in 2009, which is the key document for this topic. The last version of this guide was updated on 28 February 2021. The document is available from the URL: https://www.echr.coe.int/ documents/admissibility_guide_eng.pdf. 3. HIERARCHY OF THE ADMISSIBILITY CRITERIA The criteria of admissibility (or reasons of inadmissibility) will be presented here in a certain order based on their importance. We can say that there exists a so-called “hierarchy” of the grounds of inadmissibility of an application. This means that the analysis of admissibility of a claim has a certain sequence. Study of the Convention and the Court’s case law allows one to conclude that there are nine key grounds for an application’s inadmissibility. The application will be rejected by the Court without being examined on the merits if it: 1) is anonymous; 2) is an abuse of the right of an individual application; 3) is substantially the same as a matter that has already been examined by the Court; 4) has already been submitted to another procedure of international investigation or settle- ment and contains no relevant new information; 5) is incompatible with the provisions of the Convention and/or the Protocols thereto; 6) is a case when not all required domestic remedies have been exhausted; 7) was not lodged with the Court within a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken; 8) is manifestly ill-founded; or 9) concerns a situation where the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage.

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION

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