EHRM, 31-10-2006, nr. 41463/02

20. The applicants complained that the length of the proceedings had been incompatible with the ‘reasonable time’ requirement of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, which reads as follows:

The Government contested that argument.

The period to be taken into consideration began on 17 November 1993 in respect of the first applicant, and on 6 January 1994 in respect of the second applicant, and ended on 8 June 2006. It thus lasted some twelve-and-a-half years for three levels of jurisdiction.

The Government argued that the applicants cannot claim to be victims of violations of the Convention in this connection, since the domestic courts expressly acknowledged that the proceedings had been unusually long and provided redress by imposing very light sentences.

The applicants contested these views.

The Court observes that both the District Court and the Regional Court held that the duration of the proceedings had been extraordinarily long, and declared that this was a strong mitigating factor. As a cumulative sentence for the two offences, which were punishable with between two to five years' imprisonment, only fines of a moderate amount were imposed on the applicants. Against this background, the Court finds that the applicants obtained adequate redress for the alleged violation of their right, under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, to the determination within a reasonable time of the criminal charges against them. Accordingly, in this connection, they can no longer claim to be victims, for the purposes of Article 34, of a violation of Article 6 § 1. This complaint is therefore manifestly ill-founded, within the meaning of Article 35 § 3, and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 of the Convention (see Morby v. Luxembourg (dec.), no. 27156/02, ECHR 2003-XI; Lie and Berntsen v. Norway (dec.), no. 25130/94, 16 December 1999; Tamás Kovács v. Hungary, no. 67660/01, § 26, 28 September 2004).

The applicants further complained that the length of the proceedings had infringed their right to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions, as guaranteed by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, in that their assets had been attached by the authorities for over twelve years. Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 provides:

The Court observes that the measure to prohibit the alienation of the applicants' assets served to guarantee the satisfaction of any claims brought by potential civil parties. It considers that such a restriction can in principle be considered ‘necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest’, within the meaning of the second paragraph of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (cf., mutatis mutandis, Raimondo v. Italy, judgment of 22 February 1994, Series A no. 281-A, p. 16, § 27). It is true that in the particular case the application of this measure lasted a long time. However, even assuming that the applicants have exhausted domestic remedies in this respect, the Court is satisfied that the national courts, when imposing only moderate fines on the applicants, although they were punishable with prison sentences of considerable length, and this expressly because of the excessive protraction of the case, also gave them adequate redress for any detriment they may have suffered due to the long immobilisation of their assets.

This complaint is therefore likewise manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3, and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

The applicants also complained that the national courts had not heard all the witnesses proposed by them and had not accepted some of their arguments proposing the taking of further evidence. Moreover, they submitted that the experts involved in the case were never available for questioning at the hearings, and that the authorities were reluctant to provide them with photocopies of the documents of the case. They relied on Article 6 § 3 (b), (c) and (d) of the Convention.

Article 6 § 3 provides as relevant:

In so far as the applicants' complaint may be understood to concern the assessment of the evidence and the result of the proceedings before the domestic courts, the Court reiterates that, according to Article 19 of the Convention, its duty is to ensure the observance of the engagements undertaken by the Contracting Parties to the Convention. In particular, it is not its function to deal with errors of fact or law allegedly committed by a national court unless and in so far as they may have infringed rights and freedoms protected by the Convention. Moreover, while Article 6 of the Convention guarantees the right to a fair hearing, it does not lay down any rules on the admissibility of evidence or the way it should be assessed, which are therefore primarily matters for regulation by national law and the national courts (García Ruiz v. Spain [GC], no. 30544/96, § 28, ECHR 1999-I.). The Court stresses that the guarantees contained in Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention cannot be interpreted as granting a defendant the right to have an infinite number of witnesses called.

In the present case, the Court is satisfied that there is nothing in the case file disclosing any appearance that the courts lacked impartiality or that the proceedings were otherwise unfair or arbitrary. The mere fact that the applicants would have been required to submit their comments to, questions on or criticism of the expert opinions in writing, or that photocopies of the case file were available only on condition that the defendants make a selection of the required documents, does not render the proceedings unfair as such, inasmuch as the opinions were presented in detail in court and the case file was fully accessible to the defence.

It follows that this complaint is similarly manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

Lastly, the first applicant complained that the national authorities withdrew his passport pending the trial. As a consequence, from 6 January 1994 onwards he was unable to leave the country (at least until 1 May 2004, the day of Hungary's adherence to the European Union (‘EU’), which enabled her citizens to travel to certain EU Member States with their national identity card alone). In his view, the total travel ban lasting over a decade constituted a disproportionate measure in breach of Article 2 § 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention. Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 provides as relevant:

The Government did not address this issue.

Article 41 of the Convention provides: