Background
The applicants, Serbian police officers, sought unpaid salary supplements for work on public holidays, at night and overtime. Their claims were dismissed at first instance and on appeal in 2015 after courts compared their salary coefficients with those of civilian police officers who did not work unsociable hours.
At the same time, domestic courts had reached conflicting outcomes in materially similar claims by other officers. On 10 November 2015, the Supreme Court issued a legal opinion directing courts to compare claimants with authorised officers of the same education level who did not work unsociable hours. The applicants’ appeal judgments became final about a month later, but still applied the contrary civilian-officer comparison. Their constitutional appeals were dismissed.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously held that Serbia violated Article 6 § 1 because the constitutional-review mechanism failed to address the applicants’ complaints in light of the Supreme Court’s 10 November 2015 legal opinion. Although the domestic system had generally harmonised the lower courts’ approach after that opinion, it did not produce Convention-compatible results in these two cases.
The Court rejected the Government’s non-exhaustion objection based on the applicants’ failure to bring appeals on points of law, since the Constitutional Court had not dismissed their appeals on that ground. It also rejected the objection concerning the second applicant’s evidentiary support as excessively formalistic in the circumstances. The Court did not decide what outcome the applicants’ salary claims should have had and found no need to examine their separate complaint of arbitrary substantive-law application.
Key Takeaways
- Article 6 requires domestic systems to address unresolved inconsistency in materially similar cases.
- Where a constitutional appeal is entertained, the Constitutional Court must engage with a relevant intervening Supreme Court harmonisation opinion.
- The Court awarded costs and expenses of EUR 1,220 to the first applicant and EUR 2,620 to the second, but rejected claimed pecuniary damage.
Why It Matters
The judgment distinguishes cases decided before a national court has harmonised conflicting authority from cases in which a final judgment disregards that harmonisation after it has been issued. Legal certainty depends not merely on issuing guidance, but on effective review when courts fail to follow it.
It also confirms that exhaustion rules cannot be applied mechanically where the domestic constitutional court has considered an appeal without requiring a further ordinary remedy.