NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

rights: it must be one of the persons mentioned in Article 34 of the Convention, and be a victim of a violation of the Convention’s provisions. 340 As to the first requirement, in accordance with the provisions of Article 34, three main categories of subjects that are authorized to submit a complaint to the Court exist: persons, non governmental organisations and groups of individuals. 341 The diction of this Article of the Convention leaves no doubts as to fulfilment of this condition by NGOs. The second condition concerning a possibility to lodge a complaint with the Court, that is to be a victim of a breach of the Convention, was partially described in the previous section. At this point, we would like briefly to summarise the conclusions on the point. The notion of a ‘victim’ received an autonomous interpretation in the case-law of the Court. In the case of Gorraiz Lizarraga and Others v. Spain , 342 which originated from an application by the Coordinadora de Itoiz association, the Court pointed out that the concept of ‘victim’ must be interpreted autonomously and irrespective of domestic concepts such as those concerning an interest or capacity to act. In order for an applicant to be able to claim to be a victim of a violation of the Convention, there must be a sufficiently direct link between the applicants and the harm which they believe they have sustained on account of the alleged violation. The act or omission in issue must directly affect the applicant. 343 However, this criterion cannot be applied in a mechanical and inflexible way. 344 The practice of the Court distinguishes three types of victims: 1) direct (when an applicant is personally affected by the alleged breaches of the Convention); 2) indirect (when an applicant has a specific link with the direct victim); and 3) potential victim (when an applicant belongs to a certain category of subjects and therefore risks being directly affected as a result of possible infringements of the rights under the Convention). In addition, in the previously discussed case of Centre for Legal Resources on behalf of Valentin Câmpeanu v. Romania , 345 the Court introduced the concept of a de facto representative. Regarding the direct victim status, the case-law of the Court contains plenty of examples of when an NGO was personally involved in a dispute and its rights were negatively influenced. NGOs within the meaning of Article 34 have never been acknowledged as indirect victims of the breaches of the Convention by the Court. This is not surprising, considering that NGOs, which are usually recognised as legal persons, may hardly have any personal link with the direct victim. The Court accepts the indirect victim status of mothers and wives in respect of killed or tortured individuals. 346 Yet, this kind of relationships is impossible between natural and legal persons. The only example of the possible relations of this kind is the connections between shareholders and a company, which is also considered an NGO for the

340 Vatan , cited above. 341 HUBÁLKOVÁ, E. Řízení… , 2010, cited above, p. 35. 342 Gorraiz Lizarraga , cited above, § 35. 343 Amuur v. France , 25 June 1996, § 36, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-III. 344 Karner v. Austria , no. 40016/98, § 25, ECHR 2003-IX. 345 Centre for Legal Resources [GC], cited above. 346 Van Colle v. the United Kingdom , no. 7678/09, § 86, 13 November 2012.

70