Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria

1 Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria Updated on 1 August 2021 This Guide has been prepared by the Registry and does not bind the Court. Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria European Court of Human Rights 2/109 Last update: Publishers or organisations wishing to translate and/or reproduce all or part of this report in the form of a printed or electronic publication are invited to contact for information on the authorisation procedure. If you wish to know which translations of the Case-Law Guides are currently under way, please see Pending translations. This Guide was originally drafted in English. It is updated regularly and, most recently, on 1 August 2021. It may be subject to editorial revision. The Admissibility Guide and the Case-Law Guides are available for downloading at (Case-law Case-law analysis Admissibility guides).

2 For publication updates please follow the Court s Twitter account at Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights, 2021 Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria European Court of Human Rights 3/109 Last update: Table of contents Note to readers .. 6 Introduction .. 7 A. Individual application .. 9 1. Purpose of the provision .. 9 2. Categories of petitioners .. 9 a. Physical persons .. 9 b. Legal persons .. 9 c. Any group of individuals .. 10 3. Victim status .. 11 a. Notion of victim .. 11 b. Direct victim .. 11 c. Indirect victim .. 12 d. Potential victims and actio popularis .. 15 e. Loss of victim status .. 16 f. Death of the applicant .. 19 4. Representation .. 19 B. Freedom to exercise the right of individual application .. 21 1. Principles and examples .. 21 2. Obligations of the respondent State .. 23 a. Rule 39 of the Rules of Court .. 23 b. Establishment of the facts.

3 24 c. Investigations .. 25 I. Procedural grounds for inadmissibility .. 25 A. Non-exhaustion of domestic 25 1. Purpose of the rule .. 26 2. Application of the rule .. 26 a. 26 b. Compliance with domestic rules and 27 c. Existence of several remedies .. 28 d. Complaint raised in 28 e. Existence and appropriateness .. 29 f. Availability and effectiveness .. 30 3. Limits on the application of the rule .. 32 4. Distribution of the burden of proof .. 33 5. Procedural aspects .. 35 6. Creation of new remedies .. 36 B. Non-compliance with the six-month time-limit .. 38 1. Purpose of the rule .. 38 2. Starting date for the running of the six-month period .. 39 a. Final decision .. 39 b. Starting point .. 40 i. Knowledge of the decision .. 40 ii. Service of the decision .. 40 iii. No service of the decision .. 41 Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria European Court of Human Rights 4/109 Last update: iv.

4 No remedy available .. 41 v. Continuing situation .. 41 3. Expiry of the six-month period .. 42 4. Date of introduction of an application .. 42 a. Completed application form .. 42 b. Date of dispatch .. 43 c. Dispatch by fax .. 43 d. Characterisation of a complaint .. 43 e. Subsequent complaints .. 43 5. Special situations .. 44 a. Applicability of time constraints to continuing situations concerning the right to life, home and property .. 44 b. Applicability of time constraint concerning the lack of an effective investigation into deaths and ill-treatment .. 45 c. Application of the six-month rule as regards the conditions of detention .. 46 d. Application of the six-month rule in cases of multiple periods of detention under Article 5 of the Convention .. 46 C. Anonymous application .. 47 1. Anonymous application .. 47 2. Non-anonymous application .. 48 D. Substantially the 48 1.

5 Substantially the same as a matter that has been examined by the Court .. 48 2. Substantially the same as a matter submitted to another procedure of international investigation or settlement .. 49 a. The assessment of similarity of cases .. 50 b. The concept of another procedure of international investigation or settlement .. 50 E. Abuse of the right of application .. 51 1. General definition .. 51 2. Misleading the 51 3. Offensive language .. 52 4. Breach of the principle of confidentiality of friendly-settlement proceedings .. 53 5. Application manifestly vexatious or devoid of any real purpose .. 54 6. Other cases .. 54 7. Approach to be adopted by the respondent Government .. 54 II. Grounds for inadmissibility relating to the Court s jurisdiction .. 55 A. Incompatibility ratione personae .. 55 1. Principles .. 55 2. Jurisdiction .. 56 3. Responsibility and imputability.

6 59 4. Questions concerning the possible responsibility of States Parties to the Convention on account of acts or omissions linked to their membership of an international organisation .. 60 B. Incompatibility ratione loci .. 62 1. Principles .. 62 2. Specific cases .. 63 C. Incompatibility ratione temporis .. 63 1. General principles .. 63 2. Application of these principles .. 64 Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria European Court of Human Rights 5/109 Last update: a. Critical date in relation to the ratification of the Convention or acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Convention institutions .. 64 b. Instantaneous facts prior or subsequent to entry into force or declaration .. 64 3. Specific situations .. 65 a. Continuing 65 b. Continuing procedural obligation to investigate disappearances that occurred prior to the critical date .. 66 c. Procedural obligation under Article 2 to investigate a death: proceedings relating to facts outside the Court s temporal 66 d.

7 Consideration of prior facts .. 67 e. Pending proceedings or detention .. 68 f. Right to compensation for wrongful conviction .. 68 g. Right not to be tried or punished twice .. 68 D. Incompatibility ratione materiae .. 68 III. Inadmissibility based on the merits .. 71 A. Manifestly 71 1. General introduction .. 71 2. Fourth instance .. 72 3. Clear or apparent absence of a violation .. 73 a. No appearance of arbitrariness or unfairness .. 74 b. No appearance of a lack of proportionality between the aims and the means .. 74 c. Other relatively straightforward substantive issues .. 75 4. Unsubstantiated complaints: lack of evidence .. 76 5. Confused or far-fetched complaints .. 77 B. No significant disadvantage .. 77 1. Background to the new criterion .. 77 2. Scope .. 78 3. Whether the applicant has suffered a significant disadvantage .. 79 a. Lack of significant financial disadvantage.

8 80 b. Significant financial disadvantage .. 81 c. Lack of significant non-financial disadvantage .. 82 d. Significant non-financial disadvantage .. 83 4. The safeguard clause: whether respect for human rights requires an examination of the case on the merits .. 86 List of cited cases .. 88 Practical Guide on Admissibility Criteria European Court of Human Rights 6/109 Last update: Note to readers This Practical Guide is part of the series of Guides on the Convention published by the European Court of Human Rights (hereafter the Court , the European Court or the Strasbourg Court ) to inform legal practitioners, and in particular lawyers who may be called upon to represent applicants before the Court, about the conditions of Admissibility of individual applications. This Guide is designed to present a clearer and more detailed picture of the conditions of Admissibility with a view, firstly, to reducing as far as possible the number of applications which have no prospect of resulting in a ruling on the merits and, secondly, to ensuring that those applications which warrant examination on the merits pass the Admissibility test.

9 This Guide does not therefore claim to be exhaustive and will concentrate on the most commonly occurring scenarios. The case-law cited has been selected among the leading, major, and/or recent judgments and decisions.* The Court s judgments serve not only to decide those cases brought before it but, more generally, to elucidate, safeguard and develop the rules instituted by the Convention, thereby contributing to the observance by the States of the engagements undertaken by them as Contracting Parties (Ireland v. the United Kingdom, 154, 18 January 1978, Series A no. 25, and, more recently, Jeronovi s v. Latvia [GC], no. 44898/10, 109, 5 July 2016). The mission of the system set up by the Convention is thus to determine issues of public policy in the general interest, thereby raising the standards of protection of human rights and extending human rights jurisprudence throughout the community of the Convention States (Konstantin Markin v.)

10 Russia [GC], 89, no. 30078/06, ECHR 2012). Indeed, the Court has emphasised the Convention s role as a constitutional instrument of European public order in the field of human rights (Bosphorus Hava Yollar Turizm ve Ticaret Anonim irketi v. Ireland [GC], no. 45036/98, 156, ECHR 2005-VI). This Guide contains references to keywords for each cited Article of the Convention and its Additional Protocols. The legal issues dealt with in each case are summarised in a List of keywords, chosen from a thesaurus of terms taken (in most cases) directly from the text of the Convention and its Protocols. The HUDOC database of the Court s case-law enables searches to be made by keyword. Searching with these keywords enables a group of documents with similar legal content to be found (the Court s reasoning and conclusions in each case are summarised through the keywords).