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

This order corresponds to the sequence in the hierarchy scheme used by the lawyers of the Court. It means that in the course of analysis of an application, if, for example, the submission has to be rejected on the ground that it is substantially the same as a matter that has already been examined by the Court (ground No. 3), there is no need to examine whether it is also manifestly ill-founded (ground No. 8) or incompatible with the Convention (ground No. 5). A brief explanation of each admissibility criteria will follow. 3.1 Anonymous applications This criterion of admissibility is set down in Article 35 § 2 (a) of the Convention. An application is regarded as anonymous where the case file does not indicate any element enabling the Court to disclose the identity of the applicant. This was, for instance, the case of “Blondje” v. the Netherlands , where the applicant used only a nickname. In conclusion, the full name will need to be mentioned and aliases, abbreviations and references are not sufficient. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to this rule. An application introduced under a fictitious name may be regarded as admissible if the usage of the alias pursues an aim to protect the person, his/her family members and/or friends, see Shamayev and Others v. Georgia and Russia . It is also important to distinguish an anonymous application from the non-disclosure of the identity of an applicant, the latter being a permissible condition envisaged in the Rules of Court. 3.2 Abuse of the right of an individual application The term “abuse” can also be found in Article 35 § 3 (a) and signifies the harmful exercise of a right at variance with the Convention’s purpose. The theorists of the Court summed up that the cases concerning an abuse of the right of application can be grouped into five categories: 1. Applications containing misleading information, which are ones with untrue facts or where the falsification of documents has taken place. The case of Poznanski and Others v. Germany is an example. 2. Use of offensive speech by the applicant is inconsistent with the spirit of the human rights defence. Therefore, if the application is written in insulting, vexatious, threatening or provocative language, it can be rejected by the Court (see e.g. Řehák v. the Czech Republic ). 3. Cases where a violation of the obligation to keep friendly-settlement proceedings confidential has occurred. This obligation is based on Article 39 § 2 of the Convention and Rule 62 § 2 of the Rules of Court and must be complied with. Otherwise, it can lead to declaring an application inadmissible, as occurred in the case of Miroļubovs and Others v. Latvia . 4. Manifestly vexatious or devoid of any real purpose applications abuse the right of application as well. Time is very precious and costly and if the applicant repeatedly submits to the Court ungrounded claims, then the latter may include such a person in a so-called “black list”, which would mean that any correspondence from such an applicant will be ignored. This is a very strict measure and is used by the Convention body only in exceptional circumstances ( Philis v. Greece ). 5. The last group includes all other cases that cannot be listed exhaustively. For example, these are applications by which an applicant only aims to propagate his or her political activity (see e.g. McFeeley and Others v. the United Kingdom ) and intentionally invents violations that did not actually occur. 3.3 Substantially the same applications We call an application “substantially the same” as already examined by the Court when one or more of the following appears: identical parties, identical complaints and/or identical facts. The parties will not, however, be regarded as the same, if the application in the name of the applicants was first submitted by a non-governmental organisation and then lodged by the applicants themselves ( Illiu and Others v. Belgium). The application will also be rejected when the same applicant who owns a house with a number of flats and lodges again and again

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EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION