NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

under Article 14 only in combination with the norms envisaging substantive rights applicable to them. Consequently, they have no possibility to claim, for instance, a violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 2 of the Convention (right to life). On the other side, if they act as a de facto representative, 1067 such limitations may be permissible. The case-law of the Court regarding the applicability of Article 14 together with other provisions of the Convention foreseeing a material right to legal persons is relatively abundant. It is possible to find judgments on combinations with most of the Article 34 NGOs’ key Convention rights. The first in the list is Article 6 of the Convention. 2.9.2 Article 14 in conjunction with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention In the case of Sâmbata Bihor Greco-Catholic Parish v. Romania , 1068 the Court ruled that there has been a violation of both Article 6 and Article 14 in conjunction with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention due to the restriction on an applicant church’s access to court and discriminatory treatment on this account. The circumstances of the case may be summarised as follows. The applicant was an Eastern-rite Catholic church (also known as the Greek Catholic or Uniate church) of the Sâmbata parish. In 1948, following the dissolution of the Uniate Church, the church building was transferred to the Orthodox Church. After the fall of the communist regime in the country in the 1990s, the Uniate Church was officially recognised again. According to the legislation in the material time, joint committees of Uniate and Orthodox representatives were set up with the aim of settling any disputes in relation to property issues. However, in Sâmbata, an attempt to establish a joint committee failed as the Orthodox representatives opposed a proposal of holding alternate religious services in the church in question. The applicant parish applied to domestic courts for an order requiring the Sâmbata Orthodox parish to allow it to hold services in the parish church. In its final judgment, the national courts had dismissed the applicant parish’s request on the ground that disputes concerning the ownership or use of religious buildings fell outside the courts’ jurisdiction. In their opinion, such decisions came exclusively within the jurisdiction of the joint committees. The Court firstly noted that the joint committee, made up of representatives of the two denominations, could not be regarded as a ‘tribunal’ within the meaning of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. 1069 Secondly, the legislation in force at the material time had not laid down any rules on convening the joint committee or its decision making process. Thirdly, no time limits were set for a joint committee to give a decision. Fourthly, the judicial scrutiny to which any decision by the committee could be subjected had been limited to ensuring that the criteria established by law were satisfied, the main one being the need to reflect the majority view. All of these legislative shortcomings led the Court to conclusions that a general exclusion of

1067 Centre for Legal Resources [GC], cited above. 1068 Sâmbata Bihor Greco-Catholic Parish , cited above. 1069 Ibid., § 66.

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