PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE LÓPEZ GUERRA

I concur with the Section’s opinion concerning a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and the corresponding award of just satisfaction. However, I disagree with the Section’s assessment with respect to a violation of Article 8 of the Convention on account of the Romanian authorities’ alleged failure to act.

In my opinion, this assessment is the result of an undue extension of the concept of positive obligations. The judgment correctly makes reference to the Court’s case-law in Amac and Occan (2007) and Osman (1998). As the judgments in those cases underscore, in order to determine that a member State has failed to fulfil its positive obligations, the Court ruled that the authorities must have had knowledge “of the existence of a real and immediate risk to the life or the physical integrity of an identified individual and have failed to take measures within the scope of their powers” (see paragraph 51 of the judgment). In the present case it is obvious that the authorities had no knowledge of the existence of a real and immediate, individual risk to the applicant, but were aware of a general situation of risk that might affect citizens in general, rather than only (and specifically) this individual applicant.

According to the Court’s case-law, it is certainly justified to require the member State authorities to take action to prevent probable and immediate risks with respect to rights guaranteed under the Convention that affect specific and identified persons. But I do not deem warranted the present extension of this principle to demand that authorities adopt all necessary measures to protect all people from all forms of danger in general. The public powers are required to meet practically unlimited needs with inevitably limited means. They must provide vital services such as clean water, sewer systems, waste disposal, health care, traffic safety and public safety, among many others. And the number of victims of the faulty delivery of those services may be considerable. But it is the competent authorities of each country and not this Court who must establish priorities and determine preferences when allocating efforts and resources.

In the present case, the problem of stray dogs in Bucharest undoubtedly posed a fairly serious problem. But I believe that this Court does not have the jurisdiction to determine that it was precisely that problem that warranted preferential attention over other needs, and to find that the Romanian authorities violated Article 8 of the Convention by not giving priority to eradicating the problem of stray dogs.

In accordance with Romanian legislation, the County Court ruled that the competent administrative authorities had not taken adequate measures in this case and awarded the applicant 400 euros in damages (see paragraph 14). Subsequent judgments of other courts reversed that decision, depriving the applicant of that compensation, which this Court has hereby declared to be in violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. In my opinion, the acknowledgement of that violation and the award of just satisfaction are sufficient redress for the infringement of the applicant’s rights, which did not warrant giving an opinion concerning the Romanian authorities’ obligations with respect to general policies.