NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

ordinary Ukrainian civil or commercial courts. Then, the Court noted that one of the main reasons for the failure of the authorities to enforce the final arbitration award was the insolvency of the debtor, a state-owned and managed company. Nevertheless, in its opinion, difficulties in the enforcement of judgments from the government’s budget cannot be considered an excuse for failure to comply with the obligations under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. Furthermore, no steps had been taken by the state authorities to remedy the situation. The Court was therefore of the view that the continued non-enforcement constituted an infringement of the Convention. A similar situation was seen in the case of Kooperativ Kakhovskiy-5 v. Ukraine. 633 This time the Court did not deal with the status of the court as the decision on the award was issued by a state court, namely, the Commercial Court of Appeal of the Odessa Region. The problem of non-enforcement in Ukraine led the Court to adopt a pilot judgment in the case of Yuriy Nikolayevich Ivanov v. Ukraine . 634 In accordance with this judgment, specific reforms in Ukraine’s legislation and administrative practice had to be implemented. To resolve this problem, the Court set a specific deadline of 15 July 2011 for the setting-up of an effective domestic remedy in this respect. Ukraine did not meet the deadline and, on 21 February 2012, the Court decided to resume the examination of applications raising similar issues. 635 It observed that there were about 2,500 similar cases currently pending before the Court and that Ukraine had not adopted the required general measures to tackle the issues of non-enforcement at the domestic level. 636 On 5 June 2012, the Parliament of Ukraine adopted the Law of Ukraine, ‘On State guarantees concerning execution of judicial decisions’, 637 which entered into force on 1 January 2013. The law introduced a new specific procedure for the execution of domestic judicial decisions delivered against Ukraine, but this domestic remedy concerned only judicial decisions delivered before this date. Under pressure from the Court, on 19 September 2013, Ukraine adopted amendments to the above-mentioned law. 638 The law allowed for the possibility to apply for compensation in respect of all judicial decisions. Due to the lack of sufficient means in the state budget, the problem of non-enforcement is still a reality in Ukraine. 639 The problem of non-enforcement of final binding judicial decisions also existed in Russia. For example, in the case of OOO PTK “Merkuriy” v. Russia , the applicant company complained about the non-enforcement of the judgment of the Commercial Court of the Khabarovsk Region 640 and the Court found a violation. The pilot judgment 633 Kooperativ Kakhovskiy-5 v. Ukraine , no. 20728/04, 19 February 2009. 634 Yuriy Nikolayevich Ivanov , cited above. 635 Court decides to resume examination of applications concerning non-enforcement of domestic decisions in Ukraine . Press release issued by the Registrar of the Court. ECHR 086 (2012), 29. 02. 2012. 636 Ibid. 637 Law of Ukraine, No. 4901-17, 5 June 2012. 638 Law of Ukraine, No. 583-18, 19 September 2013. 639 Information is taken from the web pages of the Department for the Execution. URL: accessed 18 June 2015. 640 OOO PTK “Merkuriy” v. Russia , no. 3790/05, § 17, 14 June 2007.

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