Diritto civile
Tutela dei Diritti
30 | 11 | 2021
The inadequate statement of reasons for a judicial decision violates the right to a fair trial (art. 6 ECHR)
Denise Campagna
The Second Section of the European Court
of Human Rights (ECHR), with a judgement of November 30th 2021, ruled
against the Republic of Moldova for a violation of an Italian citizen’s right
to a fair trial, guaranteed by art. 6 of the European Convention on Human
Rights.
The applicant complained of a breach of
his right to a fair trial, caused by the insufficient reasoning of a decision
adopted by the Moldovan Supreme Court of Justice. The man turned to the Moldovan
judicial authorities to recover the sums he had paid to his wife – a Moldovan
citizen – in 2003 for the purchase of an apartment in Moldova. The two got
married in Italy in 2004 but later separated in 2005. In 2008, the Chișinău
Court dismissed the action brought by the applicant, finding it groundless and
out of time. The latter, relying on art. 275 of the Moldovan Civil Code, appealed
against this decision, arguing that, according to that provision, the expiry of
the three-year limitation period was suspended for the entire duration of the
marriage. In 2009, the Chișinău Court of Appeal upheld the applicant's appeal,
stating that his wife had not objected to the delay and that the first instance
judge could not rule motu proprio on this matter. However, the woman
challenged the decision, claiming that she had not been present at the hearings
of the previous levels of judgment. The applicant, in its reply, again relied
on art. 275 of the Moldovan Civil Code but the Moldovan Supreme Court of
Justice, ruling definitively on the case in December 2009, annulled the
judgement of the Court of Appeal and dismissed his appeal as out of time,
without giving specific and explicit reasons for such a decision.
Art. 6 of the Convention, in the passages
relevant to the present case, provides that: «In the determination of his
civil rights and obligations […], everyone is entitled to a fair and public
hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established
by law». The Strasbourg Court has preliminarily recalled that this article
implies, for the judge, the obligation to conduct an effective examination of
the grounds, arguments and evidence submitted by the parties, in addition to
the statement of reasons of the decisions. Without requiring a detailed reply
to each of the arguments of a plaintiff, this obligation presupposes that a
party to a proceeding may expect at least a specific and explicit reply to the
decisive issues which determine the outcome of the proceedings in which he or
she is involved.
In the present case, the ECHR held that
the suspension of the limitation period for marriage between the parties, foreseen
by art. 275 of the Moldovan Civil Code, was one of the essential issues that the
Moldovan judges had to examine, given the relevance that this provision would
have assumed in relation to the outcome of the entire procedure. Actually, if
the Moldovan judges would have considered the ground of appeal based on the
application of this article to be well-founded, the applicant’s action could
not have been dismissed as being out of time.
The Strasbourg judges then stated that the applicant’s ground of appeal based on art. 275 of the Moldovan Civil Code required an effective examination as well as a specific and explicit statement of reasons; statement of reasons that the Moldovan Supreme Court of Justice failed to provide; in fact, it was not possible to understand whether the Moldovan judges simply neglected this ground of appeal or whether they wanted to reject it. In any case, it was not possible to find the reasons that would have led the Moldovan judicial authorities to this rejection.
The above considerations allowed the European Court to conclude that the entire trial was not fair: the Republic of Moldova violated art. 6 of the Convention and was asked to pay the sum of 3,600.00 euros in favor of the applicant, by way of compensation for the non-material damage suffered.
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