CYIL vol. 10 (2019)

CYIL 10 ȍ2019Ȏ THE CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2018 THE CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2018 Vít Alexander Schorm 1 Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide a short overview of the European Court of Human Rights’ activities towards the Czech Republic in 2018. The year of reference is characterised by a limited number of delivered judgments and decisions classified as unimportant for the development of the Court’s case law. The Court nevertheless addressed questions which could have been of interest for the domestic legal system. In some instances, the State took timely general measures in order to prevent further violations as usually required under Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Resumé: Účelem článku je poskytnout krátký přehled aktivit Evropského soudu pro lidská práva vůči České republice v roce 2018. Referenční rok je charakteristický omezeným po- čtem vydaných rozsudků a rozhodnutí klasifikovaných jako nedůležité pro rozvoj judikatu- ry Soudu. Přesto Soud řešil otázky, které mohly být zajímavé pro vnitrostátní právní systém. V některých případech přijal stát zavčas obecná opatření s cílem předcházet dalším poru- šením, jak je obvykle vyžadováno podle článku 46 Evropské úmluvy o lidských právech. Key words: human rights; European Court of Human Rights; right to life; right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment; procedural obligations; domestic remedies; right to a fair trial; principle of adversarial proceedings; length of proceedings; protection of property; right to respect for private life; denial of paternity; effective domestic remedies. On the Author: Vít Alexander Schorm has been the Agent of the Government of the Czech Republic before the European Court of Human Rights since 2002. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno in 1996, studied public comparative law at l’Université de Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne (D.E.A. in 1998) and is an alumnus of the French École nationale d’administration (2002). Introduction This annual contribution aims at providing a short overview of the European Court of Human Rights’ (“the Court”) most relevant activities with regard to the Czech Republic as a High Contracting Party to the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”) in the respective previous year – 2018 in the circumstances. I have usually been forced to say that there was not much to say, except for a couple of enriching judgments, and expressed a hope that this would change in the next year. Objectively speaking, the few judgments on the merits and a couple of formal inadmissibility decisions 2 that the Court issued with respect to the Czech Republic were all classified as unimportant for the development of the Court’s case law, falling in the lowest category on 1 The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not correspond with the official position of the Government of the Czech Republic and do not bind this State Authority in any way. 2 Committee, Chamber or Grand Chamber admissibility decisions formulated with reasoning and published on the HUDOC database of the Court’s case law. Single judge decisions are usually not made in writing. The practice changed in 2017, following a call expressed in the 2015 Brussels declaration, but these decisions, which are not published, are accompanied by a very sober reasoning.

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