To: Mr. Alvaro Gil Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights Council of Europe F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX From: NGO League for Constitutionalism and Legal Culture-Kyiv; 23 Tolstogo St., apt. 29, Kyiv, 01033, Ukraine tel-fax 380-44-244-33-94

05 March 2004

Dear Commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles,

On behalf of the Ukrainian NGO-think-tank League for Constitutionalism and Legal Culture-Kyiv let me thank You for this happy occasion of being virtually present at Your meeting with our Czech partners from Strasbourg Committee who kindly agreed to hand you this letter.

The information on the Czech NGO Strasbourg Committee subject activity raised great interest of participants of training courses on public legal education (one of the League’s project in co-operation with other NGOs). Some of these participants have already acquired the experience of submitting own complaints to the European Court of Human Rights and received the letters of inadmissibility of their applications pursuant Article 28 of the Convention.

Comparing such letters they recognized that the letters do substantially differ one from another by both form and substance as well as the language in use, although the latter itself is not essential. They found that the letters written in English contain a cover letter (with reference to Court Committee’s decision) along with the decision itself. Such letters raised no doubts in their genuineness (doc. 0). Though the letters of another kind prevail – absolutely identical on both form and contents and written exclusively in Russian or Ukrainian. Each of such letters refers to a Committee decision but fails to provide any decision itself. All numerous appeals (appointed in the preamble to doc. 7-9) of the applicants to the Secretariat requesting to provide them with the relevant Committee decisions on their cases (as procedural documents containing the inadmissi-bility justification) had no any effect. In such a way the sufficient grounds for justified doubts in the very fact that such cases were tried by the relevant Court Committee appeared. Please find attached some of such letters (doc. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) along with the translation of one of them (doc. 1 Ukr., doc 1 Engl.). The letters’ statements caused doubts are

·        the reference to the Committee decision was– at the same time – in combination with the irrevocable refusal to send this decision as an act of justice, the cause for sending the letter;

·        such a refusal to provide any further information or a document concerning an applicant’s complaint being sent in advance to any inquiry.

All this was mentioned in each letter despite the Article 45 of the Convention which ensures that all decisions of the Court (and a Committee decision is a full-bodied decision of the Court) must be justified. Besides, they have to – at minimum – be themselves.

Comparing the letter with contents raising no doubts (with the decision text) and other letters makes doubts more vivid.

27 November 2003 on own initiative (it was before applying the League for a consultation) the group of applicants sent three letters to you, Secretary General of the PACE Mr. Bruno HALLER, Secretary General of the CE Mr. Walter SCHWIMMER (doc. 7, 8, 9; confirmation of their delivering – doc. 10, 10-1). Although the letter contents could not be declared as perfect (the applicants are not lawyers) we think that they raised problems that positively deserved attention. In response, every applicant received the letter in Ukrainian signed by the Court legal secretary Pavlo Pushkar (judging on a name – a Ukrainian) which insisted on the absolute nonsense of any further requests to the Court on any subject linked with their cases. This letter-response in both Ukrainian and English (in translation) is attached (doc. 11Ukr, doc. 11 Engl).

This letter gets the applicants very surprised and raised new doubts because

-         letters sent to three different offices were received by the same (judging the signature on mail receipt confirmation) employee that may result in their not-delivering to addressees assigned;

-         the reply to the letter sent to Mr. HALLER was given by the secretary of the Court (Mr. Pushkar) instead of the addressee;

-         of unnatural speed with replying: the reply was prepared at the same day of Dec 5 when all three letters just arrived to the Court !

Then there was received Mr. HALLER’s reply signed by him own and pointing out the principle of non-interference in the proceeding before the Court (or the course of justice). But the doubts were in the very fact of proceedings to be performed and it is impossible to interfere in smth that did not occurred. The question appears – don’t we possibly deal with a sample when – following the Strasbourg Committee’s conclusions – not-admitting the course of justice (proceeding before the Court) has happened through the infringements of rules on Court administration-activity? And the latter - although a substantially different than course of justice sphere - is not less important area for the sound guarding the human rights.

Unfortunately, till now there was no any reply from You and Mr. SCHWIMMER on the letter of 27.11.2003. The applicants would be very grateful for Your confirmation of this letter receipt.

On February 2004 the applicants referred to the League for a consultation on matters above and gave the necessary materials and rights to use them. The League Executive Council considers their doubts - concerning the fact that the Committee proceedings in their cases have taken place - as properly justified and sufficient for – considering the serious consequences in a case of doubts confirmation – to address you, dear Commissioner, jointly with Strasbourg Committee a kind inquiry and ask You

(1)   on the ground of documents attached to undertake the necessary measures to dispel doubts or confirm their justification;

(2)   to assist the applicants in having the motivated decisions in their cases sent;

(3)   to share with us Your ideas on the matter of legitimacy of Secretariat employees’ notification - sent in advance to any request to them – on their refusal to send any further information on cases declared inadmissible;

(4)   in case of doubts confirmation, to ensure the applicants’ cases proceeding before the Court in strict accordance with the Convention.

Within the framework of its statute activity, the League has developed a set of suggestions for making the Rules of the Court – in the part of building the algorithm of cases administration – more efficient. This set will exclude the risk of appearing doubts \ samples above in the future. We think that the difficulties originate in formulation of Article 52 & 2 of the Rules of the Court which embraces the probability of appearing the situations similar to the noted above. Except that, our suggestions include measures of an organizational character which will absolutely not demand the additional funds although will ensure the guaranty of non-recurrence of the worst of doubts. Would be proud to initiate the organization of the Conference where such suggestions will be discussed.

Sincerely Yours, Nadiya Semenova

president of the NGO League for Constitutionalism and Legal Culture-Kyiv