Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 135

November 2010

DemirbaÅŸ and Others v. Turkey (dec.) - 1093/08, 301/08, 303/08 et al.

Decision 9.11.2010 [Section II]

Article 34

Victim

Attribution of right relied on to municipality, a governmental organisation, not its members: inadmissible

Facts – Municipal councillors complained, in a personal capacity, about the dissolution of the municipal council for using non-official languages in its activities.

Law – Article 34

a) Lodging of applications by the applicants in a personal capacity – The interference concerned the municipality as the services and publications in non-official languages had been provided by the applicants as part of their official municipal functions and financed from the municipality’s budget. Moreover, all the members of the council, including the dissident members, had been stripped of their functions, and the use of another language in private activities was entirely free. The applicants, in their capacity as individuals, were free to express themselves regarding the need for multilingual services in the municipalities. However, where they took the decision, in their capacity as mayor and members of the municipal council, to use non-official languages in the activities of the municipal authority, it was the freedom of expression of the legal entity of which they formed part that was in issue as a result of the dissolution of that entity. The freedom invoked was therefore attributable to the legal entity, and not to the applicants themselves. Allowing the applicants to lodge the applications in their personal capacity would not only be tantamount to circumventing the existing case-law but would also pose a problem under Article 34, because it would pave the way for any governmental organisation to lodge this type of application, through the individuals that made up the organisation or represented it, in respect of any act characterised as an offence by the respondent Government on whose behalf they exercised public authority. In the present case the applicants had used their public-authority prerogatives; otherwise, they would not have had locus standi in the proceedings under domestic law. Moreover, the three participants in the proceedings – the municipality, the Ministry of the Interior and the judicial authorities conducting the domestic proceedings – each represented public authority and thus the respondent State. Accordingly, the rights and freedoms relied on by the applicants did not concern them individually but were attributable to the municipality. For the same reasons, the applicants could not be regarded as a “group of individuals” claiming to be a victim of a violation of the rights guaranteed under the Convention, within the meaning of Article 34.

b) The status of the municipality – This had been defined in the decision given in the case of Döşemealtı Belediyesi v. Turkey (no. 50108/06, 23 March 2010, Information Note no. 128). The dispute under domestic law concerned only the dissolution of the municipal council, and related to the right to carry on, as a decision-making body of a local authority, official activities for the municipality. It was therefore a dispute of a strictly “public” nature and, as such, could not be regarded as concerning “civil rights and obligations” within the meaning of Article 6 § 1. In the light of the foregoing, and in accordance with its well-established case-law, the Court held that local authorities did not have locus standi to lodge an application under Article 34.

Conclusion : inadmissible (incompatible ratione personae ).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes