Background
The applicants were involved in long-running proceedings concerning land-restitution claims in Slovakia. The cases arose from the same domestic proceedings previously considered by the European Court of Human Rights in two Balogh and Others judgments. For many applicants, the relevant proceedings began in December 2004. A stage before the Nitra Regional Court began on 22 July 2010; the court proceedings ended on 5 March 2020 when the costs decision became final, and the file was returned to the Komárno Land Office on 23 July 2020.
The applicants later challenged the continuing administrative delay before Slovakia’s Constitutional Court. In decisions issued in 2023 and 2024, that court declined to examine the proceedings before the administrative authorities and referred generally to an administrative action for acceleration; it also rejected complaints concerning completed judicial stages on jurisdictional or timeliness grounds. The restitution claims of various applicants were subsequently dismissed, prompting administrative appeals or actions. The administrative-court proceedings remained pending, while related appeals were stayed.
Two original applicants informed the European Court that they no longer wished to pursue their cases, so the Court struck out their respective parts of the applications. It allowed the heirs of two applicants who died while the cases were pending to continue the proceedings.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously held that the excessive overall length of the administrative proceedings breached Article 6 § 1’s “reasonable time” requirement. It rejected Slovakia’s non-exhaustion argument, reasoning that the applicants had used the constitutional complaint, which pursued the same objectives—acceleration and compensation—as the newer administrative action. The applicants were not required to pursue that parallel remedy as well, particularly because the disputed proceedings had already lasted more than eighteen years and six months when the amended remedy took effect.
The Court also found a violation of Article 13. Although it did not question the constitutional complaint’s general effectiveness, the Constitutional Court had segmented these particular proceedings and declined to consider delay before the administrative authorities. That approach conflicted with the European Court’s assessment of the proceedings’ overall duration.
The disposition was partly unfavorable to some applicants: the Court declared inadmissible the separate Article 6 § 1 complaint about the Nitra Regional Court stage, from 22 July 2010 to 23 July 2020, as raised by 35 applicants in application no. 19195/23 and 16 applicants in application no. 21299/24. It declared the remaining claims admissible and awarded the applicants or households the non-pecuniary damages and costs listed in the appendix.
Key Takeaways
- Administrative proceedings lasting more than eleven or twenty-one years, depending on the applicants, were excessive despite the case’s complexity and the Government’s criticisms of the applicants’ conduct.
- Applicants who used a constitutional complaint were not required to pursue a parallel acceleration action serving essentially the same preventive and compensatory purposes.
- A domestic court may fail to provide an effective remedy when it divides interconnected proceedings into segments instead of examining their overall duration.
Why It Matters
The judgment reinforces that reasonable-time review ordinarily considers the full course of proceedings, including connected administrative and judicial phases. Domestic procedural complexity, numerous claimants, and some applicant-caused adjournments did not justify the overall delay here.
It also distinguishes between the general effectiveness of a domestic remedy and its effectiveness as applied in a particular case. At the same time, the partial-inadmissibility ruling shows that a complaint targeting one completed judicial stage may fail even when the continuing administrative proceedings, viewed overall, violate the Convention.