Aleš Pejchal;Armen Harutyunyan;Guido Raimondi;Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos;Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska;Paul Mahoney;Robert Spano

A list of the applicants is set out in the appendix.

Mr Kaiyam was convicted of robbery and drugs offences. He was sentenced on 20 July 2006 to a combination of determinate and indeterminate sentences, with the lead sentence (for the robbery) being one of imprisonment for the public protection (“IPP”) with a minimum term (“tariff”) of three years.

In January 2008 he was assessed as unsuitable for the Controlling Anger and Learning to Manage it (“CALM”) course and anger management was made a sentence-planning target.

In February 2008 he was transferred to HMP Lowdham Grange and in May 2008 he commenced the six-week Enhanced Thinking Skills (“ETS”) course. He completed the course in July 2008. He was assessed as having made some progress on the course, but there was doubt about his ability to carry the lessons into practice and about his honesty, self-control in prison and drug use.

Meanwhile, in June 2008 he was reduced from a Category B prisoner to the lower-risk Category C. He also completed a drug awareness course in July 2008 and a victim awareness course in October 2008.

Following his reclassification as a category C prisoner, Mr Kaiyam was disciplined on twenty-three occasions for offences including disobedience, assault, drug offences and the possession of mobile telephone parts. In January 2009, he was reclassified as a category B prisoner.

On 2 February 2009 the Parole Board reviewed his case. It noted that although he had begun to address his offending behaviour he still had much work to do. The decision also noted that he had previously been referred for the CALM course but that the assessment indicated that it was not suitable for him because his offending was not emotionally driven. However, some anger management work was nonetheless required.

In April 2009 Mr Kaiyam’s tariff expired.

In July 2009, he commenced one-to-one anger management consultations with his offender manager.

In January 2010, as a result of his previous misbehaviour in custody, he was transferred to a high security prison at HMP Long Lartin, where the priority was security and rehabilitative courses were comparatively few. During his time at HMP Long Lartin, he continued the one-to-one anger management consultations until October 2011. His behaviour underwent a significant improvement.

Meanwhile, regular sentence-planning meetings took place. In May 2010 the meeting concluded that he should be referred once again for the CALM course, notwithstanding the previous negative assessment, and that he should be assessed for FOCUS, a high-intensity drug abuse programme. By September 2010 a decision had been taken not to refer him for CALM and he had yet to be assessed for FOCUS. A referral was sent to the substance abuse team on 1 September 2010.

On 14 November 2010 the Parole Board again reviewed Mr Kaiyam’s case. The decision noted that Mr Kaiyam was motivated to undertake offence-focused work but had had little opportunity to do so at HMP Long Lartin. It considered it essential that necessary work on drug abuse and anger management be progressed as soon as possible.

On 3 December 2010 Mr Kaiyam was assessed as unsuitable for FOCUS and the Prisoners Addressing Substance Related Offending (“PASRO”) course was recommended instead.

On 11 January 2011 the prison authorities confirmed that a prison transfer would be required to enable him to undertake PASRO and anger management work.

A prison transfer was subsequently planned but was cancelled when Mr Kaiyam was accused of a further disciplinary offence in May 2011. The disciplinary proceedings lasted until August 2011, when the allegation was not proceeded with because the officer who made it became ill and could not continue.

Meanwhile, at a June 2011 sentence-planning meeting it was decided that Mr Kaiyam should be transferred to another prison to enable him to complete necessary coursework. Between June 2011 and November 2012 prison staff actively sought an appropriate prison transfer for Mr Kaiyam. However, this was further complicated by the opening of his parole window in February 2012, at which point, because of the need to allow the preparation of reports for the pending Parole Board review, transfers were usually not permitted.

On 1 October 2012 Mr Kaiyam lodged a judicial review claim seeking, inter alia, a declaration that his Article 5 § 1 rights had been violated as a result of the delay from January 2010 in providing access to rehabilitative courses, and damages.

In October 2012 Mr Kaiyam’s offender manager added the Self Change Programme (“SCP”) as a sentence-planning target. In November 2012 Mr Kaiyam underwent assessment for the programme and he began the SCP in January 2013. His Parole Board review was deferred, with his agreement, to enable him to complete the SCP. The next review was fixed for October 2013.

In its decision dated 8 November 2013, the Parole Board noted that good progress was being made but declined to recommend a transfer to open conditions.

By May 2014, Mr Kaiyam had been transferred to HMP Lindholme and was undertaking a course which had replaced PASRO, namely the Building Skills for Recovery Programme (“BSR”).

His judicial review claim was unsuccessful before the High Court and the Court of Appeal. He was given permission to appeal to the Supreme Court (see paragraphs 50-62 below).

In 2006 Mr Robinson was convicted of various sex offences. He had previous convictions for sexual offences. On 2 October 2006 he received an IPP sentence with a tariff of seven years.

In 2007 he completed the ETS programme.

In 2008 he completed the six-month Core Sex Offenders Treatment Programme (“SOTP”).

A Structured Assessment of Risk and Need (“SARN”) report dated 9 July 2008 concluded with the recommendation that there should be a full psychopathy assessment and that, so long as that did not provide contra-indications, he was suitable for the Extended SOTP (“ESOTP”). By February 2009, this was a formal sentence objective.

On 24 February 2010 Mr Robinson was moved to HMP Whatton, which specialises in sexual offenders, to access the ESOTP. On 17 March 2010 he was entered on the waiting list.

Following a Parole Board Review, on 31 March 2010 the Board declined to recommend that he be moved to open conditions.

In February/March 2011 the psychopathy test was conducted.

A July 2011 OASyS (Offender Assessment System) report noted that the sentence objectives for the following twelve months included completion of the ESOTP.

In October 2011 Mr Robinson was informed that he would not be offered a place on the ESOTP until 2013 at the earliest.

Mr Robinson was assessed as suitable for the ESOTP in April 2012. In her report, the Deputy Treatment Manager indicated that he might yet need also a Healthy Sexual Functioning course.

On 26 June 2012 Mr Robinson commenced judicial review proceedings, arguing, inter alia, that his Article 5 § 1 rights had been violated as a result of the delay in providing access to rehabilitative courses.

On 2 November 2012 the Parole Board declined to direct Mr Robinson’s release.

On 10 December 2012 Mr Robinson’s tariff expired.

In spring 2013 he was transferred to HMP Risley to commence the ESOTP. He completed the course in July 2013.

His judicial review claim was unsuccessful before the Divisional Court and he was given permission to appeal directly to the Supreme Court (see paragraphs 50-62 below).

Mr Massey was convicted in May 2008 of a total of five sexual assaults on four unrelated young men, committed over a period of more than ten years. All the victims were either young or vulnerable. He had two previous sex-related convictions. He received an IPP sentence with a tariff of two and a half years.

On an unknown date, Mr Massey participated in an alcohol awareness course.

In April 2009, he completed the ETS programme.

In November 2009 he completed the Core SOTP.

In July 2010, a SARN report recommended that he be assessed for the ESOTP and suggested the likely desirability of a subsequent Better Lives Booster (“BLB”) programme.

In September 2010 his tariff expired. At a Parole Board review the Board declined to order his release. By letter dated 21 October 2010, the Secretary of State agreed with the decision of the Parole Board and identified assessment for and, if suitable, completion of the ESOTP and the BLB as appropriate further interventions. He set the review period at twenty-four months, including ten months to complete the ESOTP, taking into account the time for assessment and the waiting list.

In April 2011 Mr Massey was assessed for the ESOTP. In a report dated November 2011 he was found to be suitable for the programme.

Meanwhile, in July 2011 he completed the Cognitive Skills Booster (“CSB”) programme.

At his Parole Board hearing in March 2012, the Board noted that he had completed the CSB course and that he was awaiting a place on the ESOTP, which was expected to address much of his outstanding treatment needs. It refused to order release.

On 18 December 2012 Mr Massey commenced judicial review proceedings arguing, inter alia, that his Article 5 § 1 rights had been violated as a result of the delay in providing access to rehabilitative courses.

He commenced the ESOTP in May 2013 and completed it in September 2013.

The three appeals were heard together by the Supreme Court, which gave judgment on 10 December 2014. The court explained that it would consider whether and, if so, how far to modify its case-law in light of this Court’s judgment in James, Wells and Lee v. the United Kingdom, nos. 25119/09, 57715/09 and 57877/09, 18 September 2012, concerning access to rehabilitative courses.

Lord Mance and Lord Hughes delivered jointly the opinion of the court on the general issues of principle and in respect of Mr Kaiyam and Mr Massey. Separate opinions were given in respect of the appeal by Mr Robinson.

The Supreme Court observed that this Court’s reasoning in James, Wells and Lee opened the possibility that post-tariff detention could fluctuate between the lawful and unlawful, depending on whether a prisoner serving an IPP sentence was being offered an appropriate opportunity to progress in his sentence. The court pointed out that, according to the wording of Article 5 §§ 1 and 4, any detention not authorised by Article 5 § 1 ought to lead release. Thus in a case where detention was found to be arbitrary under Article 5 § 1, in application of the James, Wells and Lee approach, the prisoner should – according to this Court – be entitled to an immediate order for release. There was, the Supreme Court said, a real difficulty about accepting the proposition that the Convention required the release of an IPP prisoner before the Parole Board was satisfied that his detention was no longer required for the protection of the public.

As to this Court’s conclusion in James, Wells and Lee that detention following the expiry of the applicants’ tariff periods and until steps were taken to progress them through the prison system was unlawful, the court explained:

“33. ... That exposes a problem. Particularly where a tariff is of a relatively long period, a prisoner’s progression towards release through courses and experience in open conditions should, where and to the extent feasible, be facilitated not merely after but also in advance of the tariff period, so as to keep open the possibility of release on or shortly after its expiry ... Yet, on the ECtHR’s approach, treating the present issue as falling within the text of article 5(1)(a), no complaint can apparently arise until the expiry of the tariff period, and any complaint can then only arise if the failure to provide courses, etc continues after the expiry of the tariff period.

The second, much more substantial problem ... is that logically it would, if followed in the United Kingdom, mean, as we have stated, that any prisoner not being progressed through the system should be released, and that the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 section 28(6)(b) should be declared incompatible with the Convention rights insofar as it precludes this ... Many of the failings revealed by the cases which have come before the courts to date are simply incapable of being redressed at the drop of a hat or wig. Systems failed, due to lack of resources and facilities, and it takes time to mend such failures, whatever order a court might make. Moreover, in a case where the failure was repaired, as it might be by the time a court came to consider the case, by the provision of adequate opportunity to the prisoner, then the court would be left, on this view of the ECtHR decision, with detention which had been unlawful for a time but was no longer.”

The Supreme Court concluded that it was not possible to follow the reasoning of the Court in James, Wells and Lee. However, this did not mean that the House of Lords’ prior decision in that case should be followed. This Court had underlined the link which should be recognised between preventive detention and rehabilitation, and had also concluded that there should be an individual remedy in damages for failure to provide prisoners serving indeterminate sentences with proper means of progression towards release. The Supreme Court explained:

“36. We consider that the Supreme Court should now accept the Fourth Section’s conclusion, that the purpose of the sentence includes rehabilitation, in relation to prisoners subject to life and IPP sentences in respect of whom shorter tariff periods have been set. We also consider that the Supreme Court can and should accept as implicit in the scheme of article 5 that the state is under a duty to provide an opportunity reasonable in all the circumstances for such a prisoner to rehabilitate himself and to demonstrate that he no longer presents an unacceptable danger to the public. But we do not consider that this duty can be found in the express language of article 5(1). Treating it as an aspect of the duty to avoid ‘arbitrariness’ under article 5(1)(a) has unacceptable and implausible consequences which we have already identified. The Grand Chamber decision in Saadi also remains important authority that arbitrariness has a confined meaning, when used as a test of lawfulness in the context of article 5(1)(a).

Article 5(4) would be a more satisfactory home for any duty of the nature identified in the previous paragraph, if its language covered it (which it does not). Article 5(4) gives rise to an ancillary duty on the state, breach of which does not directly impact on the lawfulness of detention. The duty is to make available access to judicial review by a court or here the Parole Board, which will consider whether the information put before it justifies continued detention or release. Speedy access to the Parole Board like reasonable access to proper courses and facilities represents an important aspect of a prisoner’s progression towards release. But the language of article 5(4) is in terms confined to access to judicial review by the Parole Board on the basis of the information available from time to time. It does not cover the prior stage of provision of courses and facilities in prison, which gives rise to the information necessary on any Parole Board review.

The duty to facilitate the progress of such prisoners towards release by appropriate courses and facilities cannot therefore be brought, in our opinion, within the express language of either article 5(1)(a) or article 5(4). But it is on any view closely analogous, at an earlier stage, to the duty involved under article 5(4), and it is far more satisfactory to treat it as an analogous duty arising by implication at an earlier stage than that covered by article 5(4), rather than to treat article 5(1)(a) as incorporating it. We consider that a duty to facilitate release can and should therefore be implied as an ancillary duty - a duty not affecting the lawfulness of the detention, but sounding in damages if breached. Such a duty can readily be implied as part of the overall scheme of article 5, read as a whole ...”

The appropriate remedy for a breach of such a duty was not release of the prisoner but an award of damages for legitimate frustration and anxiety. Damages would be recoverable in respect of any period of extended detention which could be shown to have resulted after the expiry of the tariff period, whether the failure occurred before or after the expiry of the tariff period. A prisoner could also seek mandatory orders.

The Supreme Court noted that the prison service manager who reviewed Mr Kaiyam’s case accepted that there had been “regrettable delays” at some points. However, to say that more extensive coursework could have been made available to him was a very long way from saying that he had not been provided with a reasonable opportunity to rehabilitate himself and demonstrate that he no longer presented an unacceptable risk of serious harm to the public. According to the court, Article 5 did not create an obligation to maximise the coursework or other provision made to the prisoner, nor did it entitle the court to substitute, with hindsight, its own view of the quality of the management of a single prisoner and to characterise as arbitrary detention any case which it concluded might have been better managed. It continued:

“60. ... It requires that an opportunity must be afforded to the prisoner which is reasonable in all the circumstances, taking into account, among all those circumstances, his history and prognosis, the risks he presents, the competing needs of other prisoners, the resources available and the use which has been made of such rehabilitative opportunity as there has been. It is plain that Kaiyam was not denied a fair or reasonable opportunity to rehabilitate himself or to demonstrate that his risk is acceptable. In the three years of his minimum term he was provided with courses in enhanced thinking, drug awareness and victim awareness. Sadly, his response was poor, there was doubt about his honesty, and his behaviour in prison attracted the many disciplinary adjudications mentioned above, all of which demonstrated that the risk he presented was far from removed. The transfer to HMP Long Lartin somewhat reduced the availability of rehabilitative courses, but there will inevitably be differences between prisons which can give emphasis to rehabilitation and those where the priority is security. It was his own misbehaviour which led to his transfer there, over a year after the expiry of his minimum term. The consequence was that PASRO, which was the course judged, plainly bona fide, as that most suitable for him, was not available. Even without PASRO, there was sustained one to one anger management work for over a year after transfer to HMP Long Lartin. Even if, with the benefit of hindsight, consideration of CALM and FOCUS courses involved some misjudgement, it was perfectly understandable. He very plainly had anger problems, whether or not his index offences were the result of loss of temper, and he very plainly had a drug-use and drug-supply background. The advice to take an SCP course was plainly a sensible expedient, given that transfer to a place where the first choice PASRO was available had proved unavailable despite considerable efforts. Once it was identified, SCP was begun within about two months. The attempts to find a transfer were clearly persisted in; they were complicated by Kaiyam’s wish to be in a prison near to his family, by the pending adjudication in May 2011 and by a ‘parole window’ in Spring-Summer 2012, quite apart from the competing needs of other prisoners in a large prison population. His case does not begin to approach the kind of failure of provision considered and chronicled in R (James). He was afforded reasonable opportunity to rehabilitate himself and to demonstrate that he was no longer a risk to the public, but did not do either. There was no breach in his case of the ancillary obligation under article 5.”

The Supreme Court referred to the Divisional Court’s finding that there had been a breach of the Secretary of State’s public-law duty because of an under-provision of the ESOTP. This did not, however, mean that the Secretary of State was under an obligation to provide the ESOTP to every prisoner for whom it might be suggested. The question was whether the Secretary of State had afforded Mr Robinson a reasonable opportunity to reform himself and to demonstrate to the Parole Board, by the time of tariff expiry or within a reasonable time thereafter, that he no longer presented an unacceptable risk to the public. As there were differences of opinion on this question among the members of the Supreme Court, two opinions were issued.

Lord Hughes, delivering the opinion for the majority, emphasised that the breach of the ancillary obligation under Article 5 which this Strasbourg court identified in James, Wells and Lee involved a wholesale failure to address rehabilitation. He continued:

“86. ... It was of a quite different order from the complaint made by Robinson. Whereas the prisoners James, Lee and Wells in James v UK were left for a long time to languish in local prisons with no sentence planning and no rehabilitative work at all, no little effort was made with Robinson, who was provided with successive courses and had ample opportunity to change himself and to demonstrate that he was no longer a predatory sexual offender. The ETS and CSOTP courses with which he was provided supplied ample reasonable opportunity to do so. The latter in particular lasted six months or more and involved three or four sessions per week. Unfortunately, what was demonstrated was that Robinson remained a serious risk, since the initial scores for child abuse supportive beliefs proved false positives, and he remained manipulative, mistrustful and denying his principal offences, seeing himself as the real victim.”

Lord Hughes considered the strongest part of Mr Robinson’s claim to be the passage of time after the psychologist’s report of July 2008, before the ESOTP was begun in July 2013. However, in his view, since the minimum period was not due to expire until December 2012, there could have been very little complaint before at least the Secretary of State recognised the course as an objective in August 2010, and perhaps not until well after that. He further noted that in March 2011, still well before the expiry of the minimum period, there had been further detailed psychopathy assessment sessions. Although these were principally assessments rather than therapy, they provided ample opportunity to demonstrate change, or at least encouraging understanding of the true nature of what he had done. Instead, what those sessions revealed was that Mr Robinson still saw himself as the victim, denied his principal offences, believed that he had not harmed any of the children and remained manipulative. Lord Hughes continued:

“89. ... There could be no clearer demonstration of the risk he continued to present. There has certainly been considerably greater delay in putting him onto the even more intensive ESOTP than one would choose to see in an ideal prison management system, but that is not the same as saying that he has not had a fair opportunity to reform himself or to demonstrate that he is no longer a danger. Despite the delay he was able to begin the ESOTP quite shortly after the expiry of his tariff.

There is a great danger, in considering Robinson’s case, of classifying the ESOTP as the acid test by which alone he could demonstrate his safety for release. Even if it were, it would not mean that he had not had reasonable opportunity to demonstrate this already. But it was not. The fact that the psychological recommendation that Robinson should take part in this programme did not have spoken conditions attached to it, does not mean that it was the only way in which he could demonstrate his safety. It was in fact neither a necessary nor a sufficient means of doing so. It was not sufficient since it is not designed to address the offenders’ sexual interest in pre-pubescent girls; even if made available, it would have been only part of the possible programmes which Robinson might have needed in the absence of his accepting that his behaviour, which he continued to characterise as innocent victimhood, was in fact a considerable danger to children, and in the absence of his recognition that it needed to alter. It was not necessary, because by this time he had had ample confrontation with his failings, and if he had recognised them and shown real willingness to change, for example in the course of the nine hours of interviews for the PCL-R assessment, then there may well have been no occasion for six months of ESOTP work.”

Lord Hughes emphasised that the responsibility for deciding what form of rehabilitative assistance was to be afforded to a prisoner had to rest with the individual State, providing that the minimum standard was met of a reasonable opportunity to him to demonstrate safety. The availability of limited resources, particularly at a time of national financial stringency, was an unavoidable factor. He continued:

“91. ... The Core Sex Offenders’ Treatment Programme (“CSOTP”) administered in the prisons of England and Wales is of considerable intensity and makes extensive psychological demands on those offenders who take part in it. It is very likely that if it stood by itself it would meet the duty contemplated by James v UK and even more likely that it would do so if coupled, as it is, with the EST, BLB, HSP and other programmes, which are available. There is no legal obligation to provide an ESOTP course in the first place. It is simply one possible way of tackling recalcitrant attitudes in some prisoners and a welcome arrow in the quiver for the case of those who prove very difficult to change. To hold that a delay (including an unacceptable delay) in providing it constitutes a breach of article 5, via the ancillary duty recognised, would be likely to have the perverse effect of discouraging the prison service from providing it at all, and/or of discouraging recommendations for courses unless and until they are known to be shortly available, and/or of discouraging the prison service from devising and suggesting new forms of programme, especially if they are extremely expensive, as clearly the ESOTP is. All these effects would be an impediment to individualised prisoner assessment and management, and to eventual rehabilitation of those for whom it is possible.”

Lord Mance dissented, explaining that in his view a legislative scheme for IPP prisoners had to allow a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate safety and had to be accompanied by reasonable systems and resources to enable offenders to change and develop so as to be able to demonstrate that they were safe and to achieve release by tariff expiry or reasonably soon thereafter. As an element of this duty, he considered that there should be a reasonable degree of access for IPP prisoners to the ESOTP which many prisoners would need before they could hope to show that they were safe. That was the consequence of the scheme itself, under which it was otherwise inevitable that prisoners would languish in prison long after the tariffs set by reference to the seriousness of their actual offending. In his view, this was a consequence of the rehabilitative purpose of the IPP sentence. A finding that there was no breach of the ancillary duty in the present case could not, Lord Mance said, stand with the finding of the Divisional Court that the Secretary of State was in breach of his public law duty to make reasonable provision of systems and resources for the purpose of allowing Mr Robinson a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate to the Parole Board, by the time of tariff expiry on 10 December 2012 or reasonably soon thereafter, that he was safe to be released. He would therefore have upheld Mr Robinson’s appeal and awarded modest damages.

The Supreme Court upheld Mr Massey’s appeal. It said:

“68. ... It is apparent that the less than two and a half years of his tariff (somewhat shortened, properly, by time spent on remand awaiting trial and sentence) was as well furnished with offender-behaviour work as one could reasonably expect. He first completed the ETS course, which is a frequent if not conventional first step, and he was placed on the CSOTP within his comparatively short tariff period. He completed the CSOTP in November 2009, and since it is a six month course it would appear that he must have been placed on it almost immediately after completing the ETS in April of that year. The SARN report which first mooted the ESOTP was in July 2010, so that there could never have been any prospect of his being both assessed for, and completing, the ESOTP by the time of his tariff expiry in September 2010. The chronology illustrates the fact that if standard, intensive, course work such as the CSOTP does not succeed and if lack of risk is not demonstrated at the end of it, it will be inevitable that a prisoner with this kind of tariff period will pass the end of the tariff without being able to be offered every course which the system has.

However, it is important to note that, no doubt mindful of the comparative brevity of his tariff, the Secretary of State by the formal letter of October 2010 effectively defined what was regarded as a reasonable opportunity for Massey to build on the partial progress which he had made and to demonstrate (if he could) that he was safe to release, namely over a two-year period. Neither this timetable nor anything approximating to it was honoured. Instead, it was not until after that period had come and gone that he was able to begin the ESOTP, and the letter shows that even if this produced a successful outcome, a further year or thereabouts was contemplated. We conclude that in Massey’s case there was a failure to provide him with the opportunity to try to demonstrate that he was safe for release which the Secretary of State regarded as reasonable. The assessment for ESOTP was in Spring 2011. If there had been a plentiful supply of places he might have been on it by about Autumn of that year, but no real complaint could have been made merely because this kind of course was not immediately available; if it had been provided in or about Spring 2012, there would we conclude have been no breach. There is thus an unacceptable delay of about a year, and all post tariff. The inference of legitimate frustration is justified and that period calls for an award of damages. Given that it was post tariff we assess it at £600.”

The relevant domestic law and practice is set out in the Court’s judgment in James, Wells and Lee, cited above.


CASE OF COUDERC AND HACHETTE FILIPACCHI ASSOCIÉS v. FRANCE

Violation of Article 10 - Freedom of expression -{General} (Article 10-1 - Freedom of expression;Freedom to impart information);Damage - claim dismissed (Article 41 - Non-pecuniary damage;Pecuniary damage;Just satisfaction)

Aleš Pejchal;André Potocki;Angelika Nußberger;Ann Power-Forde;Branko Lubarda;Dean Spielmann;Erik Møse;Helen Keller;Helena Jäderblom;Johannes Silvis;Josep Casadevall;Julia Laffranque;Khanlar Hajiyev;Ledi Bianku;Mark Villiger;Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska;Päivi Hirvelä;Paul Lemmens;Paulo Pinto De Albuquerque;Robert Spano

The applicants are the publication director and the publishing company, respectively, of the weekly magazine Paris Match. Ms Anne-Marie Couderc was born in 1950 and lives in Levallois-Perret. The company Hachette Filipacchi Associés has its registered office in Levallois-Perret.

On 3 May 2005 the British newspaper the Daily Mail published an article headlined “Is this boy the heir to Monaco?”, describing the disclosures by a woman, Ms Coste, who claimed that her son’s father was Albert Grimaldi, who had become reigning prince of Monaco (hereafter, “the Prince”) following the death of his father on 6 April 2005. The article mentioned a forthcoming publication in Paris Match, and set out its core elements. It was accompanied by three photographs, one of which showed the Prince holding the child in his arms and was captioned “His successor to the throne? Prince Albert with Alexandre”.

On the same day, having been informed that an article was about to appear in Paris Match, Prince Albert served notice on the applicants to refrain from publishing it.

On 4 May 2005 the German weekly magazine Bunte published the interview with Ms Coste. The front cover of the magazine was headlined “Prinz Albert ist der Vater meines Kindes” (“Prince Albert is the father of my child”). It was illustrated by two photographs of the Prince: in one of them he was pictured alongside Ms Coste, and in the other he held the child in his arms.

On the same day various Internet sites relayed the news. In France, information from the forthcoming Paris Match article was included in an article on the RTL radio station’s Internet site entitled “Le prince Albert II aurait un fils, silence au Rocher” (“Prince Albert II alleged to have a son, no comment from Monaco”). For its part, the LCI channel published an article headlined “Albert : la rumeur d’un fils” (“Albert: rumours about a son”) on its Internet site. The news also appeared on the Internet site of the MEDEF (French Business Confederation), as follows: “L’enfant caché du prince Albert de Monaco : selon certains journaux britanniques et allemands, Albert de Monaco serait le papa d’un petit garçon de 19 mois” (“Prince Albert of Monaco’s secret son: according to certain British and German newspapers, Albert of Monaco is the father of a 19-month-old boy”).

On 5 May 2005, in spite of the Prince’s notice to refrain, the weekly magazine Paris Match published an article in its edition no. 2920, presented on the magazine’s cover under the headline “Albert of Monaco: Alexandre, the secret child” (“Albert de Monaco: Alexandre, l’enfant secret”), illustrated by a small photograph showing the Prince with the child in his arms. The article, published on pages 50-59 of the magazine, consisted of an interview with Ms Coste, who replied to questions put by a journalist and stated that the father of her son Alexandre, born on 24 August 2003, was the Prince. In particular, the interview described the circumstances in which Ms Coste had met the Prince, their intimate relationship, their feelings, and the manner in which the Prince had reacted to the news of Ms Coste’s pregnancy and had behaved towards the child at his birth and subsequently.

The relevant passages of this interview follow:

“Paris Match: When did you meet Albert of Monaco?

Nicole Coste: Eight years ago, on a Nice to Paris flight... Before landing he asked for my telephone number. Two weeks later I had a message on my mobile...

... He wanted to invite me to Monaco...I went there the following weekend... We spent a very tender night next to each other, it was very romantic! After that weekend he called me to say that he had had a very pleasant time and that he wanted to see me again.

As the months went by, I fell very much in love. I spent weekends in Monaco. He took me everywhere with him when he didn’t have official duties...

I had the impression that something was happening. He didn’t speak about his feelings, but I heard his heart beating. There are signs that can’t be mistaken when you’re in someone’s arms... He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t ask him anything. But he had tender looks and gestures towards me, even in public, and even in front of other young women. I think that he appreciated my affection. He told his friends that I was very very loving, and that he liked my maternal side. For my part, I found him touching.

P.M. Did you meet up often?

N.C. For the first five years I went to Monaco about once a month... Sometimes he took me along to official events, such as the World Music Awards or tennis tournaments...

P.M. Did you ever meet his father, Prince Rainier?

N.C. Yes. At a dinner with about twenty guests; Albert told me that we couldn’t go along together, since his father [would be] there. In the afternoon, he indirectly made me his loveliest declaration of love, by saying to a friend in front of everyone ‘Take good care of Nicole. I am very fond of her.’ And he kissed me...

P.M. What did he tell you about his talk with his father?

N.C. We spoke about it the next day. I found him strange. I became worried. ‘I’ve been thinking’, he said. ‘I believe it’s better if we stay friends.’

P.M. How did you react?

N.C. ... I was crying. I telephoned him to find out if it was really over. ‘If you were in my situation, what would you do?’ He answered ‘I would wait. Not for long, but I would wait...” ...

P.M. One has the feeling that Albert’s discussion with his father was a turning point in your relationship.

N.C. It’s true, the relationship deteriorated after that. At the same time, however, he seemed to be afraid of taking a decision; he hesitated, taking one step forward and two steps back...

... Albert is not someone who expresses his feelings or who argues. He has a good sense of humour. I had the impression that he still had feelings. We saw each other with more or less the same frequency, but for less time, one day instead of three. I had the impression that he was afraid of becoming too attached. In December 2002 I wanted us to celebrate my ... birthday together. He suggested that I come to Monaco... we went [out] for a drink. There were lots of young women coming up to him, and I let him know that I wasn’t happy about that. On returning to the flat, we became lovers again, something that I didn’t want that night. The evening had annoyed me.

P.M. Was it then that you became pregnant?

N.C. Yes. Neither he nor I had planned it. I was taking precautions...When I saw Albert on 11 December I had sore breasts. I said to him ‘If I’m pregnant, what are we going to do?’ He replied ‘If you’re pregnant, you must keep it’. He said it from the heart. He immediately began thinking of boys’ names, and I was coming up with girls’ names, since I already had two boys. He said ‘I’m trying to think of boys’ names – that’s all you know how to make!”...

Shortly afterwards, I had a positive pregnancy test... I wanted him to take a decision very quickly... I was well aware of what a child represented for Albert, given his position. In my opinion, it was for him to decide... He said to me ‘Keep it. I’ll look after things. You won’t lack for anything. I don’t promise to marry you, but keep him and don’t worry: I’ll bring him into the family little by little. I’d like us to keep the news to ourselves for the moment. The only person I must tell is my adviser and childhood friend, whom you know well.’

P.M. Did he contact you for news during your pregnancy?

N.C. From time to time. He spoke to me very kindly. Then one day he came to see me in Paris with his adviser... I was three months’ pregnant. He seemed to have changed his mind, but as far as I was concerned it was too late. The adviser said to me ‘Do you realise that if it’s a boy, they’ll use that to prevent Albert acceding to the throne, and the child will be able to claim the throne’. I was surprised that he was going into things that were only details for me. I wasn’t even thinking about these questions... it is clear to me that a child born outside marriage cannot accede to the throne.

P.M. What happened next?

N.C. I learned that I was expecting a boy. I was very worried... I asked him if it would make things difficult if it was a boy... “No, no more than if it were a girl.” He put his hand on my stomach and we discussed names again...

When I was five-and-a-half months’ pregnant, I called him. He didn’t behave the way he usually did with me, I understood that something had happened and that he wanted to end the relationship. He said “I’ve thought it through. I’ve asked for advice. The child is impossible”.

I went to see a lawyer, who alerted Albert’s lawyer. Albert called me immediately, and was very annoyed: ‘You’ve trapped me...’ He spoke to me as though he had been brain-washed. I was eight months’ pregnant, and had become pregnant six years after our first meeting. I would have had multiple opportunities to become pregnant.

P.M. How was the birth?

N.C. 24 August 2003 is not my happiest memory. I was very alone. On the day I left hospital, I was visited by a French laboratory, approved by the Swiss Forensic Institute, for a DNA swab from my son. That was organised by his adviser.

My two older children still didn’t know who their little brother’s father was... Alexandre was sleeping in my bedroom, in a crib... He suffered from asthma and was hospitalised for six weeks... I had to deal with this alone, with no one to confide in.

P.M. When did he see Alexandre for the first time?

N.C. Two and a half months after his birth... the most important thing for me was that Alexandre be recognised. It was out of the question that my child would not have a father. That is how I explained it to them. For me, non-recognition would have been the only basis for taking things to court. It was up to Albert to organise things so that this little baby had a more or less normal life, even if, at the very beginning, it had been necessary to hide him. But I didn’t want him to grow up like Mazarine, for example. I thought only about that, and not for a second about the fact that he represented a potential heir. Meanwhile, Albert was paying me a sum every three months that I still receive.

P.M. What happened subsequently?

N.C. As I didn’t really trust my lawyer any longer, I contacted another one, to whom I explained that the only thing that counted was that Albert recognise his son. In my opinion, non-recognition of a child amounts to denying him his roots...

P.M. Did Albert realise how important it was for you that he recognise this child?

N.C. Ultimately, yes, to my great joy: on 15 December 2003 he arranged to meet me at a notary’s office, with his adviser...

P.M. What happened during the meeting at the notary’s office?

N.C. Albert signed the deed of recognition. He did it out of respect for me, while giving instructions that this deed was not to be transcribed in the official register until after his father’s death.

P.M. Do you have a copy of this deed of recognition?

N.C. I wasn’t given any papers, I only have the registration number of the deed. I asked the notary several times for a certificate stating that he had a document concerning my son. I was told “Later.” After Rainier’s funeral I contacted the notary again, asking that Albert’s undertaking be upheld, and that the official recognition of our son’s paternity be entered in the register of births and deaths. Again, the notary told me that it could wait... I again asked for a copy of the deed. He refused...

P.M. What about your flat? Did you finally move?

N.C. ... I found a house in April 2004, and work is currently being carried out on it.

P.M. To whom does it belong?

N.C. To a property investment company (an SCI). 50% of the shares are in Alexandre’s name...

P.M. What contacts have you had with Albert since seeing him at the notary’s office to sign the deed recognising your son?

N.C. I wanted him to see his son regularly, and also to call for news of him. He has done that... During one of his visits, I said ‘Just because we’ve had a child, that doesn’t mean that everything has to end between us’. He replied ‘For the moment, I prefer that we end things, because if we continue we’ll end up with a second child!’

P.M. Why have you decided to speak out?

N.C. I’ve already given you some reasons. I want Alexandre to grow up normally, with a father. I want the lies to stop. For my part, I’m fed up with lying, hiding and passing for the mistress of his friends. On account of this silence, I no longer have an identity and I live almost like an outlaw. I’m afraid for my son’s psychological health. I should like to have him baptised as soon as possible, with a correctly drawn-up birth certificate. In addition, I understand that there are rumours going around about this child, and I want the truth to be re-established, so that his two older brothers have a dignified image of their mother.

This interview was illustrated by five photographs of the Prince with the child and three of the Prince with Ms Coste. In particular, a double-page spread (pages 50 and 51) consisted in a photograph of the Prince holding the child in his arms, headlined “Alexandre ‘is Albert’s son’ says his mother”, followed by this text:

“A little boy who knows how to say only two words: daddy and mummy. A little boy who does not seem troubled by the huge gulf between the two cultures from which he comes. His name is Alexandre, a conqueror’s name, an emperor’s name. He was born in Paris on 24 August 2003. His mother asks that he does not grow up clandestinely, ‘like Mazarine’. For that reason, she is now disclosing his existence, which poses no threat to any republic or any dynasty. Because in Togo, the country of his maternal family, all children, whether or not they are born to lawfully married couples, are entitled to an official father. For the moment, the little boy with black curls isn’t interested in knowing whether he is a prince or not. His mother just has to lean towards him and he is happy. There’s already a king in the house... him.”

The photograph was also accompanied by the following captions:

“The 47-year-old new sovereign of Monaco had not been known to have any long-term relationship. Today Nicole Coste, an air hostess whom he met eight years ago, claims that they have had a son.”

“He’s never been seen smiling like this before: Prince Albert succumbs to Alexandre’s charm.”

Four photographs of the Prince holding the child in his arms were published on pages 52, 53, 56 and 57, and were also accompanied by captions and/or sub-headings. In particular, the caption on page 52 reads “Gentleness, tenderness and patience, key words for a prince who loves children”, and on page 53, “The Prince has always had a soft spot for children” and “Albert, President of the Monegasque Olympic Committee, wearing an Olympics shirt, with Alexandre in his arms”. The following sub-heading appeared on pages 56 and 57: “Alexandre at 6 months. He is already trying to stand up. This is one of his very first meetings with Albert. He sleeps in his mother’s bedroom. Nicole and her three sons have already moved into a flat in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.”

Lastly, three photographs of the Prince with Ms Coste were published on pages 58 and 59. The photograph on page 58 was captioned as follows:

“They met on a Nice to Paris flight, Nicole was an air hostess. She had left Lomé, in Togo, eight years previously, aged 17. ‘In my country, a father would have obliged his son to recognise his child’.”

The photographs on page 59 were sub-titled as follows:

“Nicole also attended official events. In May 2001 she was on the Prince’s right as he received the singer Yannick at the Monte-Carlo Music Awards. In 2002 (left) she can be seen in the Royal box at the Grand Prix.”

On 10 May 2005 Ms Coste issued a statement indicating that she had agreed to give an interview to Paris Match, for publication in the edition of 5 May 2005, had carefully reread its wording, and had herself handed over the photographs showing the Prince with Alexandre. She specified that she had taken those photograph, and that she had taken them with the Prince’s full consent. She issued a further statement indicating that she had handed these photographs over to the media for publication without charge. She added that her son had been recognised before a notary, that the notarial deed had been signed on 15 December 2003 and that it had been agreed on that date that the deed would be sent to the district hall of the 14th arrondissement of Paris immediately after Prince Rainier’s death. She stated that she had attempted, by all amicable means, to find a compromise with the Prince’s lawyer, and that it was the fact that the Prince had failed to honour his undertaking which had induced her to bring the matter to the public’s attention. With regard to the media, she stated: “they have merely helped my son and myself to have Alexandre officially recognised”.

On 19 May 2005, considering that the publication of the article in Paris Match interfered with his rights to private life and to protection of his own image, the Prince brought fixed-date proceedings against the applicants, on the basis of Article 8 of the Convention and Articles 9 and 1382 of the Civil Code, seeking damages from the publishing company and an order that it publish the court’s ruling on the front cover of the magazine, and requested that the court’s decision be immediately enforceable.

On 29 June 2005 the Nanterre Tribunal de Grande Instance (the “TGI”) ordered the company Hachette Filipacchi Associés to pay the Prince 50,000 euros (EUR) in non-pecuniary damages. It also ordered that details of the judgment be printed on the magazine’s entire front cover, at the publishing company’s expense and on pain of a daily fine, under the headline “Court order against Paris Match at the request of Prince Albert II of Monaco”. The judgment was immediately enforceable.

The TGI noted, in particular, that from the front page onwards, the magazine had disclosed the Prince’s paternity outside marriage, under the headline “Albert of Monaco: Alexandre, the secret child”, accompanied by a photograph showing him holding the child. It also noted that the article dealt with the issue of the Prince having fathered the child over ten pages inside the magazine, by means of an interview in which the questions led Ms Coste to discuss her relationship with the Prince, the couple’s feelings, the Prince’s private life and reactions and the child’s recognition before a notary. It emphasised that the magazine had deliberately chosen numerous photographs, taken in the context of the intimacy of the protagonists’ private life, to illustrate and lend support to the disclosure, and that these photographs were accompanied by the magazine’s own captions, which also referred to the Prince’s love life and the circumstances in which he met the interviewee, analysing his conduct and his reactions to the young woman and the child, and speculating as to his feelings with regard to this secret child.

The TGI held that the entire article, including the accompanying photographs, fell within the most intimate sphere of love and family life and that it did not concern any debate of general interest. It added:

“... the claimant’s accession to the throne of the Principality of Monaco did not deprive him of the right to respect for his private life, nor of his right to protection of his own image in the face of mere rumours concerning the civil status of a child, which could not in any event serve as a legitimate pretext for providing information to a prying and curious public about the lives of public figures, their feelings and their private conduct, with a view to media coverage in the columns of a newspaper which cannot in all seriousness claim to take the place of the courtroom, which is where the rights of children are legally defended, without prejudice to those of women;

The disputed article, which treats rumours in a sensational manner, both in its wording and through the accompanying pictures - which are completely irrelevant in that they contribute to the impugned interference with private life - amounts to a serious and wilful breach of the claimant’s fundamental personality rights, the latter having specifically served notice by extra-judicial process on the publishing company to respect those rights on 3 May 2005...”

The applicants appealed against that judgment.

In a press release of 6 July 2005 the Prince publicly acknowledged that he was the father of Alexandre.

On 13 July 2005 the Versailles Court of Appeal suspended the immediate enforcement of the TGI’s judgment with regard to the order to publish the court’s judgment.

On 24 November 2005 the Versailles Court of Appeal gave judgment. It noted that, through the interview with Ms Coste, the impugned article focused on disclosing the birth of the child, who was presented as having been born from the intimate relationship between the interviewee and the Prince from 1997 onwards. It also noted that although the latter might already have made a statement recognising the child in a notary’s office – that is, in deliberately chosen conditions of confidentiality – by the time that the article was published, this statement had not given rise to a note in the margin of the child’s birth certificate, with the result that his birth and his father’s identity remained unknown to the public.

The Court of Appeal also stated that a person’s affections, love life or family life and issues of paternity and maternity came within the sphere of private life and were protected by Article 9 of the Civil Code and Article 8 of the Convention, and that those provisions made no distinction between anonymous persons and public figures, whatever their civil, political or religious functions. It noted, however, that this principle allowed for an exception whenever the facts disclosed could give rise to a debate on account of their potential impact or consequences given the status or function of the persons concerned, in which case the duty to provide information took precedence over respect for private life.

It reasoned as follows:

“Given that the fact of Albert Grimaldi’s fatherhood had never been publicly recognised, that the Monegasque Constitution makes it impossible for a child born out of wedlock to accede to the throne and that Albert Grimaldi had not consented to the disclosure of his possible paternity of Ms Coste’s child, since on 3 May 2005 he had indicated to Hachette Filippachi Associés his opposition to the publication of those facts, it follows that Hachette Filipacchi Associés deliberately breached the provisions of Article 9 of the Civil Code and of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, without being able to justify this offence on the inexistent requirements of current-affairs reporting, the legitimacy of the information or its readers’ right to information, which did not include Albert Grimaldi’s secret paternity, even if he had become the reigning Prince of the Principality on his father’s death in April 2005;

This interference in his private sphere, in that the article did not merely disclose the existence of a “secret” child but also contained numerous digressions derived from Ms Coste’s confessions concerning the circumstances of their meeting, the respondent’s feelings, his most intimate reactions in response to the news of Ms Coste’s pregnancy and his attitude towards the child during private encounters in her flat, could not be justified by the concomitant publication of these facts in the magazine Bunte, or by the media impact caused by the content of the article, or by the fact that other publications had subsequently repeated these reports (which had become common knowledge through the fault of the publishing company), or by the alleged legitimacy of such a disclosure, given that the child had no official status which would have rendered his birth and the disclosure of the father’s identity a subject which the media and specifically the company Hachette Filipacchi Associés, were required as part of their duty to provide information, to bring to the public’s attention, or by the fact that Albert Grimaldi, faced – against his will – with the media impact of the disclosure of information about his private life that he had intended to keep secret if not confidential, has been obliged to provide a public explanation, or by the tone of the article, which, as Hachette Filipacchi Associés irrelevantly specifies, was intended to show the respondent in a particularly positive light;

Although the photographs showing the child with the respondent which accompany the article were taken by Ms Coste with Albert Grimaldi’s consent, and although Ms Coste, the only person having parental responsibility for the child, handed them over to Paris Match for publication, it remains the case that Albert Grimaldi did not consent to their being published in support of an article which constitutes an invasion of his privacy, with the result that their publication is wrongful...”

The Court of Appeal concluded that the publication in question had caused the Prince irreversible damage in that the fact of his paternity, which he had wished to keep secret and which had remained so from the child’s birth until publication of the impugned article, had suddenly, and against his will, become public knowledge. It considered that the non-pecuniary damage thus caused justified an order for publication of the court ruling as supplementary compensation, and that, in view of the nature of the breach and the seriousness of its consequences, such a measure was not conditions of publication of the court ruling, which was no longer to appear under a headline and was to take up only one third of the front cover. Thus, the Court of Appeal ordered that the lower third of the front cover of the first issue of Paris Match to be published in the week following service of the judgment was to display a white box containing the following text, printed in red letters, failing which the applicant company would be fined EUR 15,000 per issue after expiry of that deadline:

“By a judgment of the Versailles Court of Appeal upholding the judgment delivered by the Nanterre Tribunal de Grande Instance, the company Hachette Filipacchi Associés has been held liable for infringing the privacy and the right to his own image of Albert II of Monaco in issue no. 2920 of the Paris Match newspaper, dated 5 May 2005, in an article entitled ‘Albert of Monaco: Alexandre. The secret child’.”

This statement was published on the front cover of edition no. 2955 of the magazine, dated 5 January 2006, under a photograph of the Prince. The cover bore the headline “Albert of Monaco. The truth has been punished”, which was accompanied by the following commentary:

“Paris Match disclosed the existence of his son, Alexandre. The courts have punished freedom to impart information. We have received support from the international press in reaction to this.”

In addition, the applicants lodged an appeal on points of law against the Court of Appeal’s judgment. In their grounds of appeal, they developed the following arguments: the disclosure of a ruling sovereign prince’s paternity was a news event relating to public life, given the functions held by the individual in question and the hereditary nature of the transmission of power in the Principality of Monaco; divulgation of this information was necessary in order to inform the public; the publication of observations and digressions alongside the announcement of a news event such as the fact of a sovereign prince’s fatherhood was lawful, provided that these were innocuous and merely served to put the information into perspective; and the publication of photographs taken within the family, illustrating the news event described in the article, was not such as to interfere with respect for privacy and private life.

Relying on Article 10 of the Convention and citing the Court’s case-law, the applicants also argued that the public had the right to be informed, and that this right extended to information concerning the private life of certain public figures. They considered, in particular, that the Court’s decision in the case of Von Hannover v. Germany (no. 59320/00, §§ 62 and 76, ECHR 2004VI) would have been the reverse had the relevant member of the royal family been, as in the present case, the Prince himself, Head of the State of Monaco. In support of this argument, they cited the case of Krone Verlag GmbH & Co. KG v. Austria (no. 34315/96, 26 February 2002), which, they submitted, showed that the fact of being a politician brought an individual exercising that role into the sphere of public life, with the attendant consequences. They further argued that the Court of Cassation also recognised the public’s right to information, including with regard to facts concerning private life, even where the individual concerned held no public office. Lastly, they submitted that the primacy of the right to inform and the right to be informed had been established in similar circumstances, even where a person’s right to their own image was in issue.

The applicants argued, in particular, that in a hereditary monarchy the Prince’s lack of known issue was already a matter of discussion, and that the existence of a child was such as to contribute to that discussion. They also submitted that the child was a potential heir to the Monegasque throne, since his father could legitimise him at any time. They considered that, even if improbable, this scenario remained legally possible, and could therefore become the subject of a general debate regarding the future of the Monegasque monarchy, and that, in addition, the fact that the child was of Togolese origin could contribute to a debate of general interest which had the potential to change the image of a particularly conservative principality.

The applicants also pleaded the very strong ties which, they alleged, bound the Principality of Monaco to France. They further submitted that the worldwide impact of the contested material, including in the most serious and most prestigious newspapers, proved that the information disclosed by Paris Match was such as to contribute to a debate of general interest, and that this was not simply an article written to provide entertainment.

They further argued that the photographs accompanying the article, showing the Prince with the child or with Ms Coste, illustrated a news event, and that they entailed no breach of respect for human dignity, since the Prince was presented in a positive light. They asserted that these photographs had not been taken without the Prince’s knowledge, but by Ms Coste herself, and specified that she had handed them over to Paris Match for publication, voluntarily and without charge.

Lastly, they emphasised that the magazine Bunte had published an almost identical article in Germany on 4 May 2005, prior to publication of the impugned article, and that the German courts had dismissed the Prince’s action against that newspaper.

By a judgment of 27 February 2007, the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal on points of law on, inter alia, the following grounds:

“... every person, whatever his rank, birth, fortune or present or future functions, is entitled to respect for his private life; ... the judgment notes firstly that, on the date on which the article was published, the child’s existence and his descent were unknown to the public, and secondly that the Principality’s Constitution rules out the possibility of his accession to the throne, since he was born out of wedlock, a situation that, moreover, the company’s pleadings did not claim to be a subject of debate in French or Monegasque society or of examination in the impugned publication, and, lastly, [that] the article contained multiple digressions on the circumstances in which Ms Coste and Prince Albert met and about their relationship, the Prince’s reactions to the news of the pregnancy and his subsequent attitude towards the child; ... in the light of these findings and considerations, the Court of Appeal correctly noted the lack of any topical news item or any debate on a matter of public interest which would have justified its being reported at the time of the impugned publication on the grounds of legitimate imparting of information to the public;... moreover, the publication of photographs of a person to illustrate subsequent content which amounts to an invasion of his privacy necessarily infringes his right to control of his own image...”

On 12 May 2005, after publication of the initial article on 4 May 2005 (see paragraph 11 above), the weekly magazine Bunte published another article about the disclosure of the Prince’s paternity, this time accompanied by several photographs showing the Prince and the child.

The Prince brought urgent proceedings against the magazine in order to prevent any further publication, but his case was dismissed on 19 July 2005 by a judgment of the Freiburg Regional Court (Landgericht), upheld on 18 November 2005 by the Karlsruhe Court of Appeal (Oberlandesgericht).

The Freiburg Regional Court noted, in particular, that, as a figure of contemporary society par excellence, the Prince had to tolerate the impugned encroachment on his private life, given the information value of the report. It noted that the veracity of the information published by the magazine with regard to the statements by the child’s mother and to the claimant’s paternity had not been disputed on any specific point. It considered that the publication was not unacceptable in terms of the protection of a person’s intimate sphere, since the disclosures did not relate to that sphere but to the sphere of private life, which was less protected. It held that the public’s right to information resulted from the claimant’s position in society, and that the pressure that he might have experienced as a result of those disclosures, aimed at obliging him to recognise his child, did not prohibit publication but was merely an inevitable consequence of it, which he was required to tolerate. It noted that the published photographs had been taken with the claimant’s agreement, in his private sphere, and had been made available to the press by a person who had just as much right to do so as the claimant. It held that the protection of the claimant’s private sphere and his right to his own image had to yield to the freedom of the press, on account of the importance of communicating to the public information concerning the claimant’s son born out of wedlock and about the child’s mother. Lastly, it considered that it was for the mother rather than for the Prince, who had not recognised the child, to decide whether the disclosure of the latter’s existence fell within the protected private sphere.

Following the appeal by the Prince, the Court of Appeal ordered the magazine not to republish or allow to be published a photograph which had appeared in the 4 May 2005 issue of Bunte, showing the claimant in a moment of intimacy with Ms Coste. However, it considered that the issue of a male heir to the prince of Monaco – a constitutional hereditary monarchy – was of decisive importance, and that the interest taken in this question not only by the citizens of Monaco but also by many persons who lived outside the Principality deserved protection and ought not to be superseded by the claimant’s interest in securing protection of his private sphere, on the ground that the current legal situation allowed only legitimate children to accede to the throne.


CASE OF IULIAN MOCANU AND OTHERS v. ROMANIA

Remainder inadmissible;Violation of Article 6 - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Criminal proceedings;Article 6-1 - Reasonable time)

The list of applicants and the relevant details of the applications are set out in the appended table.

The applicants complained of the excessive length of criminal proceedings. In some of the applications, the applicants also raised complaints under other provisions of the Convention.


Aleš Pejchal;Armen Harutyunyan;Kristina Pardalos;Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos;Robert Spano

The applicant, Mr Luciano Vannucci, is a San Marinese national who was born in 1949 and lives in Faetano. He was represented before the Court by Mr A. Campagna, a lawyer practising in Dogana.

summarised as follows.

In 2009 criminal proceedings were instituted in Italy against a named individual, X, who was charged, inter alia, with issuing invoices for fictitious operations (emissione di fatture per operazioni inesistenti) and fraudulent bankruptcy to the detriment of an Italian company, C. (under the control of X and later declared bankrupt on an unspecified date).

In the context of the above-mentioned Italian proceedings against X, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan sent a letter of request (no. 81/2009) to the San Marino judicial authorities, seeking their assistance in accordance with Article 29 of the bilateral Convention on Friendship and Good Neighbourhood between San Marino and Italy of 1939. The request was aimed at obtaining information and documents and carrying out searches in all the San Marinese banks, fiduciary institutions and companies involved with X.

In particular, the Public Prosecutor stated that investigations into fraudulent bankruptcy had begun after company C. had been declared bankrupt as it was suspected that the funds used to pay the abovementioned invoices for fictitious operations and other large amounts of money had been taken from the assets of company C. It further transpired that once company C. had gone bankrupt, 1,373,814.10 euros (EUR) had been transferred from a current account owned by the Italian company F. to a current account (no.1) owned by a San Marinese company, Z., via three cheques. To justify such transfers, Z. had issued a series of false sales invoices.

On 13 January 2009 the sum of EUR 1,273,814 had been transferred from company Z.’s current account to another current account (no. 2) that was also in its name.

A series of cash withdrawals amounting to EUR 1,224,500 had been made from account no. 2 and over the same period of time a similar amount had been deposited in a current account connected to a fiduciary mandate under no. MS1314/A, which had been opened on 27 February 2009 by a certain B. in his capacity as legal representative of a certain, named company.

On the basis of the information provided by the Italian Public Prosecutor, on 30 April 2009 the investigating judge (Commissario della Legge Inquirente), considering that all the requirements set by the law for the execution of letters of request had been fulfilled, accepted the Italian request in relation to fraudulent bankruptcy and ordered the execution of the request by means of an exequatur order.

The investigating judge ordered the search of a specific San Marinese bank in order to obtain all the documents and relevant information related to current account no. 1, into which the three cheques had been paid. The judge also ordered the bank to submit a copy of all the relevant documents in its possession within ten days. The judge further ordered the freezing of account no. 1 and the seizure of all the money in it, which had been traced back to X, and company Z, as well as the freezing of any other current accounts and the seizure of their contents if any money from current account no. 1 could possibly have been transferred there. In addition, any legal entities or individuals concerned, who had been notified of the exequatur order, were ordered to submit a copy of all the relevant documents in their possession within ten days.

On 4 May 2009 the judicial police (Polizia Giudiziaria) carried out the exequatur order by freezing current accounts nos. 1 and 2 (both belonging to company Z.), which at the time had balances of EUR 690.22 and EUR 99,460.47 respectively. Some documents related to the two current accounts were also seized during the same search.

On an unspecified date, one of the institutions that had been served with the exequatur order (company F.P.) informed the authorities that it administered a fiduciary mandate put in place by “one of the accused people” (the above-mentioned fiduciary mandate no. MS1314/A). As a consequence, on 6 May 2009 the judicial police seized a further EUR 1,194,290 from the current account connected to the mandate and EUR 5,000 deposited in a bearer savings book (libretto al portatore) belonging to the new administrator of company F. (a certain P.). The total sum was thus EUR 1,299,440.69.

On an unspecified date the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan sent another letter of request to the investigating judge (no. 110/2009) as a complement to letter no. 81/2009. The request was aimed at charging the applicant and another person, M., with the offence of money laundering.

By a decision of 8 June 2009 the investigating judge accepted the request in relation to the crime of money laundering and instructed the judicial police to identify the applicant and to question him and M. within twenty days. Moreover, considering that the alleged offence had been committed in San Marino, the judge also ordered the institution of criminal proceedings against the applicant and M. for money laundering under Article 199 bis of the Criminal Code.

On 22 March 2011, the Italian Public Prosecutor, in the context of the proceedings under letter of request no. 81/2009, asked the investigating judge to release all the money that had been seized so it could be returned to the bankrupt company C. and for control (affidamento) to be given to the insolvency administrator of the company who had been joined as a civil party to the Italian proceedings for fraudulent bankruptcy. The request was made after a similar one had been submitted directly by X. to the San Marinese courts on 4 March 2011. That request was attached to the one from the Public Prosecutor.

The investigating judge accepted the request made by the Italian Public Prosecutor by a decision of 23 March 2011. In line with Article 25 of the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism of 2005, ratified by San Marino in 2010, the judge ordered that sums that had been seized and traced back to X should be released and returned to company C. and that control of the money should be given to the insolvency administrator of the bankrupt company.

On 4 April 2011, the judicial police executed the above-mentioned decision by releasing EUR 1,211,384.50 and transferring it to company C.’s current account.

Neither the decision of 23 March 2011 nor the subsequent police report concerning the execution of the order were ever notified or communicated to the applicant or to any other accused party in the criminal proceedings no. 665/RNR/2009.

By a judgment delivered in the above-mentioned criminal proceedings on 13 June 2013, filed in the registry on 23 December 2013 and notified to the applicant on 16 January 2014, the first-instance criminal judge (Commissario della Legge Decidente) found the applicant and four other people guilty of money laundering under Articles 50, 73 and 199 bis of the Criminal Code, over the period of January to April 2009. The applicant was sentenced to three years and six months’ imprisonment and prohibited for four years and six months from holding public office and exercising political rights or running a business.

The judge held that the applicant had had the operational role of organising the companies’ structures, which were then used to disguise the various money transfers which had constituted money laundering. According to the judge it had been shown that the money transferred to the company Z.’s current accounts had come from F. and had originally derived from the bankrupt company C.

The judge, applying Article 147 of the Criminal Code, also ordered the confiscation of the money that was still subject to the seizure order and which had not been transferred to company C. (EUR 104,440.69). He also sentenced the applicant and his co-accused to pay, in solidum, EUR 1,273,673.41 (the sum returned to company C.), known as “confiscation by way of equivalent measures” (confisca per equivalente), in accordance with Article 147 § 3 of the Criminal Code (see paragraph 31 below). The order was issued because it was impossible to confiscate the further amount of money considered to have been laundered as it had been returned to company C.

On 17 February 2014, the applicant appealed against his conviction, challenging, inter alia, the order to pay the equivalent amount of money.

The applicant complained that the order to pay EUR 1,273,673.41 had to be considered as an unfair duplication of the penalty against him, noting that that sum of money had previously been seized and then transferred (in accordance with the investigating judge’s decision) by way of compensation to the company that had been the victim of bankruptcy, without involving the applicant or his co-defendants.

The applicant complained that the inability to carry out a “direct confiscation”, which was a prerequisite under the law for applying “confiscation by way of equivalent measures”, had not been the result of any actions by him, and thus he should not have been held responsible for the payment of such an amount.

The applicant also mentioned the unconstitutionality of, on the one hand, the “overlapping” of compensation for victims and, on the other, the confiscation of an equivalent amount of money. He argued that that had led to an unjustified payment by those who had been sentenced.

On 17 March 2014 the applicant made further written submissions, reiterating, inter alia, the argument of unconstitutionality.

By a judgment of 8 January 2015, filed in the registry on 14 January 2015, the applicant’s appeal was dismissed by the Judge of Criminal Appeals (Giudice d’Appello Penale).

The judge noted that the complaint regarding the confiscation of an equivalent amount had to be considered as clearly irrelevant given the fact that Article 147 § 3 of the Criminal Code (as modified by Law no. 28 of 26 February 2004), did not provide that the prerequisite for such a confiscation order was that “direct confiscation” had been made impossible by the defendant. The judge further noted that at the time of the firstinstance judgment it had not been possible for the judge to order the direct confiscation of all the assets which had been laundered as most of them had already been transferred to company C. The judge had therefore been correct in ordering the accused, including the applicant, to pay an equivalent amount of money.

Article 29 of the Bilateral Convention on Friendship and Good Neighbourhood between Italy and San Marino of 1939, in so far as relevant, reads as follows:

“The judicial authority of each contracting State, following a request from the other contracting State, shall notify acts, execute acts in conjunction with preliminary investigations, including the seizure of objects constituting the corpus delicti, and carry out any other act related to criminal proceedings ongoing before the abovementioned authorities.”

Article 25 of the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism of 2005, ratified by San Marino on 2010, in so far as relevant, reads as follows:

“1. Property confiscated by a Party pursuant to Articles 23 and 24 of this Convention, shall be disposed of by that Party in accordance with its domestic law and administrative procedures.

When acting on the request made by another Party in accordance with Articles 23 and 24 of this Convention, Parties shall, to the extent permitted by domestic law and if so requested, give priority consideration to returning the confiscated property to the requesting Party so that it can give compensation to the victims of the crime or return such property to their legitimate owners.

When acting on the request made by another Party in accordance with Articles 23 and 24 of this Convention, a Party may give special consideration to concluding agreements or arrangements on sharing with other Parties, on a regular or casebycase basis, such property, in accordance with its domestic law or administrative procedures.”

Article 199 bis of the Criminal Code, as amended by Chapter 2, Article 7 of Law no. 28 of 26 February 2004, and by Article 77 § 2 of Law 92 of 17 June 2008, as applicable at the time of the facts (JanuaryApril 2009) in so far as relevant, read as follows:

“1. A person is guilty of money laundering, where, except in cases of aiding and abetting, he or she conceals, substitutes, transfers or co-operates with others to so do, money which he knows or should know was obtained as a result of crimes not resulting from negligence or contraventions, with the aim of hiding its origins.

or whosoever uses, or cooperates or intervenes with the intention of using, in the area of economic or financial activities, money which he knows or should know was obtained as a result of crimes not resulting from negligence or contraventions.”

If the crime at the origin of the laundered money has been committed in a foreign country, such a crime has also to constitute a prosecutable criminal offence in San Marino (deve essere penalmente perseguibile e procedibile anche per l’ordinamento Sammarinese)

The judge applies the penalty provided for the predicate offence if it is less heavy.”

Article 147 of the San Marino Criminal Code, as modified by Article 5 of Law no. 28 of 26 February 2004, read at the time of the commission of the offence in the present case (January – April 2009) as follows:

“1. In a judgment of conviction, the Judge shall order (il giudice ordina) the confiscation of the items belonging to the convicted person which were used or were intended to be used to commit the crime, as well as the confiscation of the price, the product, and the profit of the crime.

In a judgment of conviction the Judge shall always order (è sempre obbligatoria) the confiscation of the items which were used or were intended to be used to commit the offence ex Art.199 bis (money laundering), or offences connected to terrorism, or offences with the purpose of subverting the constitutional order, as well as ordering the confiscation of the price, the product and the profit of the crime. If confiscation is not possible the Judge shall order (impone l’obbligo di) the payment of an amount of money equivalent to the value of the above-mentioned items.

The confiscated items or the equivalent amount of money shall be allocated to the State Revenue Service or, if necessary, destroyed.”


Remainder inadmissible (Article 35-3-a - Manifestly ill-founded);Violation of Article 6 - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Administrative proceedings;Article 6-1 - Fair hearing;Adversarial trial;Equality of arms)

Julia Laffranque;Paul Lemmens;Stéphanie Mourou-Vikström;Georges Ravarani;Ksenija Turković

The applicant was born in 1974.

In February 2011, after holding a firearms licence and a hunting permit for about ten years, the applicant asked the S. Police Department (hereinafter: “the police”) to renew his firearms licence for hunting purposes. He did not live in Croatia but went hunting when he spent holidays there.

When submitting his request the applicant relied on a certificate of the Ministry of Health (Ministartsvo zdravstva Republike Hrvatske) attesting that he was healthy and thus capable of carrying firearms.

Following the applicant’s request the police carried out a background check. A report of 22 February 2011, available in the file, contains a finding of the police that the applicant had often been under the influence of alcohol when visiting Croatia.

On 18 August 2011 the applicant was summoned by the police to give a statement concerning the intention of a weapons commission not to renew his firearms licence. The applicant denied any alcohol abuse and stated that he had been a hunter for several years and that, if necessary, he could undergo any test concerning his health and the alleged drinking problem.

In a further written statement dated 19 August 2011 the applicant contended that hunting was his hobby and that his membership of a hunting association was related to his social status. He denied any allegations of alcohol abuse and argued that there were no justified reasons for a refusal to renew his firearms licence.

On 23 August 2011 the applicant made the same objections through a lawyer. He stressed that his request for renewal of the firearms licence could not be refused merely because somebody had allegedly said that he was a drinker.

On the same day the police dismissed the applicant’s request for renewal of his firearms licence and ordered him to hand over his weapons on the grounds that a police inquiry had shown that he had a problem of alcohol abuse.

The applicant challenged this decision before the Ministry of the Interior (Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova Republike Hrvatske, hereinafter “the Ministry”), arguing that he had been falsely accused by some neighbours and that there was no evidence of any drinking problem. He also stressed that hunting allowed him to see his friends, and that those who had made the allegations against him did not really know him.

On 11 October 2011 the Ministry ordered the police to produce a new assessment of the background check on the applicant, on the grounds that the report of 22 February 2011 (see paragraph 9 above) had not been substantiated with the relevant evidence.

On 9 November 2011 the police produced a new report on the background check on the applicant. The report, which was available in the file, provided further details on the applicant’s alleged alcohol abuse, which had been confirmed by his neighbours in Croatia. The report explained that all the relevant details concerning the sources of this information were classified as confidential information.

On 12 December 2011 the Ministry dismissed the applicant’s complaints, on the grounds that the documents from the case file suggested that he had a problem of alcohol abuse.

On 6 February 2012 the applicant lodged an administrative action in the Administrative Court challenging the Ministry’s decision. He contended that the refusal to renew his firearms licence had been based on mere insinuations, and that there had been no relevant evidence to support the findings of the police. In particular, he contended that he had never been registered as a person with a problem of alcohol abuse and he had never been convicted of an offence related to the abuse of alcohol. In his view, the police based its conclusion only on the basis of gossips of his neighbours in Croatia.

On 14 April 2012 the applicant asked the police to disclose the relevant reports containing the allegations against him, in particular the identity of those who had seen him under the influence of alcohol and the date and place when that had happened. On 1 March 2012 he received a reply that the information which he requested could not be disclosed since it was confidential (see paragraph 16 above), as provided under the relevant domestic law (see paragraphs 31-32 below).

On 26 April 2012 the Administrative Court held a hearing at which it heard the parties’ arguments. The applicant’s representative stressed that the police had failed to produce any credible evidence justifying the refusal to renew the applicant’s firearms licence. He also considered that it was not clear on which grounds the police had dismissed the applicant’s request. The Ministry’s representative explained that further details of the applicant’s background check, in particular the names of individuals from whom the relevant information had been obtained, were confidential as provided under the Confidentiality of Information Act.

As the parties did not have any further proposals for the examination of evidence, the Administrative Court concluded the proceedings and scheduled a hearing for the delivery of the judgment for 4 May 2012.

On 27 April 2012 the Administrative Court found that the judgment could not be delivered,, and ordered the Ministry to provide the confidential case file containing the details of the information on the applicant’s background check. It explained that the file at issue would be inspected by the judges and would not become part of the Administrative Court’s case file.

At a hearing on 17 May 2012 the Administrative Court examined the confidential file of the police without the presence of the parties. Afterwards, in the resumed hearing in the parties’ presence, the applicant’s representative reiterated his arguments that the applicant did not have a drinking problem. He did not seek examination of further evidence.

On 23 May 2012 the Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s administrative action and upheld the decisions of the administrative bodies refusing to renew the applicant’s firearms licence. It explained that it was satisfied from the examination of the confidential reports that the reasons for the police’s refusal to renew the applicant’s firearms licence were well founded. It also held that the medical certificate attesting that the applicant was healthy and capable of carrying firearms did not call these findings into question, as that was only one element in the assessment of an individual’s suitability to be granted a firearms licence. The relevant part of the Administrative Court’s decision reads:

“By examining the classified file of the defendant the court ... established that the police officer’s conduct, while searching for and collecting information from citizens, ... was in accordance with the By-law on the conduct of the police in the procedure for issuing a licence for the procurement of weapons to a natural person ... and, based on data and information collected from interviewed citizens, found that the plaintiff is prone to common and excessive alcohol abuse, which indicates a possibility of weapons abuse.

Consequently, the plaintiff’s claim that the defendant wrongly applied the substantive law, is unfounded, while the plaintiff’s objection that the medical certificate is sufficient evidence showing that the defendant wrongly determined the facts of the case was not accepted by this court because the medical fitness for possessing and carrying weapons which is established through a certificate of medical fitness is only a special requirement for the weapons acquisition permit to natural persons within the meaning of section 10 paragraph 3(1) of the Weapons Act, while the defendant acting in accordance with the [above-cited] By-law ... established that the plaintiff does not meet the requirement of section Article 10(5) of the Weapons Act, as one of the general requirements which natural persons need to meet in order to be issued a firearms licence.”

The applicant challenged this decision before the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske), complaining that he had been denied access to the evidence containing allegations against him and that therefore he had been left without any opportunity to challenge those allegations. He also argued that his right to respect for his private life had been breached by the unjustified refusal to extend his firearms licence, which prevented him from hunting. In this connection he explained that he had been a hunter for over ten years, and that hunting was his way of maintaining contact with his friends.

In support of his constitutional complaint the applicant submitted a list of signatures of his neighbours attesting that he did not have a problem of alcohol abuse. He also submitted a medical certificate indicating that he had no problem of alcohol abuse.

On 6 February 2014 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s constitutional complaint as unfounded. It explained that it was primarily the function of the relevant authorities to examine the facts and apply the relevant law and that it was not its function to deal with alleged errors of law or fact, in so far as they had not infringed human rights and freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution. The Constitutional Court held that since the applicant had had access to the police reports on his background check, which contained details for dismissing his request (see Bakırcı the reports referred to in paragraphs 9 and 16 above), the fact that further details on which those report had been based, including personal details about individuals who had provided information to the police, had not been disclosed to him did not infringe any of his rights.

The decision of the Constitutional Court was served on the applicant’s representative on 18 February 2014.


Violation of Article 5 - Right to liberty and security (Article 5-1 - Lawful arrest or detention);Violation of Article 6 - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Civil proceedings;Article 6-1 - Access to court);Non-pecuniary damage - award (Article 41 - Non-pecuniary damage;Just satisfaction)

Angelika Nußberger;Erik Møse;Mārtiņš Mits;Nona Tsotsoria;Síofra O’Leary;Yonko Grozev

The applicant was born in 1952 and lives in Sofia.

The applicant is a former police officer. Criminal proceedings were brought against him in 1996.

By a decision of the competent prosecutor of 6 March 1996, as provided under domestic law at the time, the applicant was placed under house arrest. The period of arrest continued until 3 April 1996, when the applicant was remanded in custody. He was once again placed under house arrest on 1 July 1996 and was released on 30 September 1997.

The applicant therefore was deprived of his liberty for one year, six months and twenty-five days.

In a final judgment of 27 January 1998 the Sofia Military Court found the applicant guilty of failing to perform his duties and he was given a oneyear suspended prison sentence.

In another set of proceedings, in a final judgment of 26 March 2003 the Supreme Court of Cassation convicted the applicant of fraud and sentenced him to one year of imprisonment.

The court also held in the second set of proceedings that the applicant should serve a single sentence for all his offences, which was set at one year in prison.

On 1 July 2003 the applicant was once again detained and placed in prison to serve his sentence. He was released on 18 September 2003 by a decision of the competent prosecutor. The prosecutor noted that the period of pre-trial detention should have been deducted from the applicant’s sentence, which meant he had already served it.

As he had worked in prison the applicant was also entitled to a reduction of his sentence by seventeen days.

In 2004 the applicant brought a tort action against the prosecution authorities under section 2(6) of the State and Municipalities’ Responsibility for Damage Act (see paragraph 21 below). He claimed 20,000 Bulgarian levs (BGN) for non-pecuniary damage for his detention in 1996-97 to the extent it had exceeded the set term of imprisonment and BGN 40,000 for his imprisonment between 1 July and 18 September 2003.

The domestic courts examined witnesses and a court-appointed psychologist who said that the applicant had been traumatised by the experience and suffered from anxiety, that his personality had been “permanently altered”, that he had difficulties communicating with others, and that his family ties had been “irreparably damaged”.

In a judgment of 2 May 2006 the Sofia City Court (hereinafter “the City Court”) allowed the claim in part, finding that the applicant had been detained for nine months and twenty-nine days in excess of his sentence and awarding him BGN 10,000 for non-pecuniary damage. It stated that his detention in 1996-97 had been “unjustified” and that his imprisonment in 2003 had amounted to “unlawful detention without any valid grounds”.

In accordance with the applicable provisions of domestic law, the City Court ordered the applicant to pay BGN 2,040 (the equivalent of 1,040 euros – EUR) in court fees, calculated as a pro rata percentage of the part of his claim that had been dismissed.

The judgment was upheld on 18 June 2007 by the Sofia Court of Appeal (hereinafter “the Court of Appeal”), which specified that the prosecution authorities were also liable to pay default interest on the above amount, calculated from 18 September 2003.

In a final judgment of 24 April 2009 the Supreme Court of Cassation reduced the award to BGN 3,000 (approximately EUR 1,530), plus default interest. It justified the reduction by referring to the “nature of the offences” the applicant had been convicted for, the “regime under which the sentence had been served” and the “socially acceptable criteria for justice”. It did not deal with the matter of court fees and took no separate decision in that regard.

The Court has not been informed whether and when the amount above was paid to the applicant. Calculations made with a calculator available on the Internet show that the default interest on BGN 3,000 for the period from 18 September 2003 to 24 April 2009 would be BGN 2,265 (the equivalent of EUR 1,155).