PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE GROZEV

1. I voted in the present case in favour of finding that Article 8 is applicable, and that it has not been violated, as the applicant had sufficient opportunities to present his Article 8 claims before the domestic courts. I join Judge O’Leary in her analysis under Article 8, with which I fully agree. In particular, I agree with her arguments that in the present case the primary concern of the domestic authorities was the protection of the rights of V. The margin of appreciation enjoyed by the respondent State under Article 8 entitled it to institute domestic proceedings focused on the protection of V.’s rights. Those proceedings, admittedly, did not provide the applicant with the full panoply of procedural rights that an adversarial procedure would allow. However, they did take into account the applicant’s Article 8 rights to an extent sufficient for there to be no violation of his Convention rights.

2. As to the applicant’s Article 6 complaint, in my view Article 6 is not applicable. In finding Article 6 to be applicable, the majority relied on the Court’s case-law on social-security contributions (see Schouten and Meldrum v. the Netherlands , 9 December 1994, Series A no. 304), and tax obligations (see Ferazzini v. Italy [GC], no. 44759/98, § 25, ECHR 2001 ‑ VII). Applying its standard analysis under the civil limb of Article 6, the Court has found Article 6 to be applicable with respect to social-security contributions, concluding that they have sufficient elements of private contractual relations. By contrast, the Court has held with respect to tax obligations that they fall within the “the normal civic duties” in a democratic society and thus are of an entirely public character and not “civil” within the meaning of Article 6.

3. What is important in the analysis of the Court in this line of cases, in my view, is its insistence on the clear distinction between obligations of a private and a public character. The Court has cited the following examples and used the following language when describing cases that are typically of a public character: fines imposed by way of “criminal sanction”, and obligations which are pecuniary in nature and derive from tax legislation or are otherwise part of normal civic duties in a democratic society (see Schouten and Meldrum , cited above, § 50).

4. The majority pointed out (see paragraph 67 of the judgment) that the applicant had no right to contact with V. under national law, such a right being limited under domestic law to contact of adult persons with children. They distinguished, however, between the question of a right to contact under domestic law and the question of the imposition of a contact ban. They then held that as the contact ban could not be understood to be part of normal civic duties in a democratic society, there was a civil obligation within the meaning of Article 6, which was thus applicable.

5. With all due respect, I find this analysis overly limited. It does not take into account three significant elements of the case at hand.

Firstly, the pecuniary element of the applicant’s civil obligation is an uncertain future event which will occur only if the applicant breaches the contact ban and a fine is imposed on him. At this stage of the proceedings before the Court the ban clearly has no pecuniary element to it.

6. Secondly, even if one accepts that a fine for non-compliance with the contact ban is so automatic under domestic law that it brings the pecuniary character of the fine within the scope of our Article 6 analysis, such a fine would still be much closer to a “fine imposed by way of ‘criminal sanction’”, and thus to the field of public law, than to an obligation under private law. The type of proceedings instituted by the domestic authorities, the role of the guardian and the other authorities in these proceedings, including a possible future fine, as well as the character of the sanction – a fine – clearly point to a rationale of protecting public order rather than a private-law vindication of V.’s individual rights. Thus, both the contact ban and a possible future fine would be closer to a public-law “criminal sanction” than to the enforcement of private rights. Under the Court’s case ‑ law, the applicant’s complaint would thus fall outside the “civil obligation” realm of Article 6.

7. Thirdly, as the applicant has no right to contact V. under national law, the contact ban imposed on him cannot create a civil obligation without an underlying civil right. As rightly pointed out by Judge Yudkivska in her separate opinion, in reviewing similar complaints the Court has held, in a case about a ban on reporting court proceedings, that as “the right to report matters stated in open court is not a civil right, then an interference with that right cannot create a civil obligation within the meaning of Article 6” (see Mackay & BBC Scotland v. the United Kingdom , no. 10734/05, § 22, 7 December 2010).

8. Taking all of the above into account, I voted to find that Article 6 is not applicable in the present case.