Published on 11 July 2022

FIRST SECTION

Application no. 29833/21 Ismail BALENOVIĆ against Croatia lodged on 6 June 2021 communicated on 24 June 2022

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns non-enforcement of a judgment in the applicant’s favour against a private individual.

The applicant instituted civil proceedings for disturbance of possession against his neighbour and obtained a final judgment ordering the neighbour to build a supporting wall between their respective properties with a view to preventing landslides from the neighbour’s land. The applicant in his civil action specified the dimensions of the wall to be built but the courts dismissed that part of his action. The civil proceedings lasted from 23 May 2012 until 19 October 2017, that is, five years and almost five months, at two levels of jurisdiction.

When the applicant applied for enforcement of the judgment, the enforcement courts dismissed his application for enforcement holding that the judgment was unenforceable because it was not sufficiently specific, and the debtor therefore did not know the exact extent of his obligation. The enforcement proceedings lasted from 27 July 2018 until 7 December 2020, that is, two years and four months, at three levels of jurisdiction.

The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 thereto about the non-enforcement of a final judgment in his favour and about the overall length of civil and the ensuing enforcement proceedings.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Has there been a breach of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and/or Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 on account of the applicant’s inability to enforce a final domestic court’s judgment against his neighbour? Was the decision of the domestic courts in the applicant’s case in line with the Constitutional Court’s view expressed in its decision no. U-III-1930/2019 of 29 January 2020?

2. Was the combined length of the civil and enforcement proceedings in the present case in breach of the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?