DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE LÓPEZ GUERRA JOINED BY JUDGE GYULUMYAN

The ruling given by the S ection in the present case refers to a fine imp o sed by a Moldovan c ourt amounting to a total of 8 . 80 e uros. That fine was the result of domestic proceedings involving two levels of jurisdiction and four court rulings by the Soroca District Court on 26 July 2005; the Bălţi Court of Appeal on an unknown date (paragraph 11); the Soroca District Court again, on 19 December 2005; and finally by the Bălţi Court of Appeal again, on 8 February 2006.

To address the merits, given the nature of the proceedings, which dealt with a verbal dispute between the applicant and another person, the insignificant amount of the penalty imposed, the fact that the case was heard four times by domestic courts and the handling of the case by those courts as described in the Section judgment, I cannot find any violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. Concerning the alleged lack of reasoning in the domestic judicial rulings, as the Section ’ s judgment points out (paragraph 25), Article 6 § 1 does not require the courts to answer the parties ’ arguments in any specific detail. Indeed, cases such as the present one dealing with minor administrative offences can certainly be adequately adjudicated in oral proceedings, hearing the parties ’ claims, stating the facts as found, deciding the case and citing the applicable norms in a summary judgment. This was the procedure followed by the Soroca District Court. Moreover, the Bălţi Court of Appeal subsequently delivered a longer judgment, which provided an analysis of the applicant ’ s complaint (paragraph 15).

The present dissent refers, therefore, to the Section ’ s ruling on the merits of this case. But I also strongly question whether the Court should have ruled on the merits in the first place. The Section posed the question as to whether the applicant ’ s complaints were inadmissible under Article 35 § 3 (b) of the Convention concerning the absence of any significant disadvantage to the applicant. The Section was certainly justified in posing that question in view of the reduced amount of the fine imposed, as well as the fact that the issue raised by the applicant has been amply dealt with by the Court. But the Section decided in favour of admission because it concluded that the question as to whether the case had been duly considered by a domestic tribunal (provided for under Article 35 § 3 (b) of the Convention) was closely related to the applicant ’ s complaint under Article 6. In my opinion, this approach, which equates an examination of the existence of due consideration by a domestic tribunal with the examination of the Article 6 requisites for a fair trial, is contrary to the very terms of Article 35 § 3 (b). In accordance with the Court ’ s case-law in Holub v. the Czech Republic ( (dec.), no. 24880/05, 14 December 2010), the requirement of having been “duly considered” should not be interpreted as strictly as the requirements of a fair trial. Thus the Section ’ s interpretation voids the content of Article 35 § 3 (b), which represents a reflection of the principle of subsidiarity, and the guarantee that the Court shall examine any complaint brought before it which has not been duly considered by a domestic tribunal. Therefore, it would have been preferable to have declared this case inadmissible by virtue of Article 35 § 3 (b).