DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE KOVLER

To my regret, I cannot share the majority ' s view, even though I am certain, that in the present case the non-enforcement of a judgment in the applicant ' s favour has entailed violations of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

In my opinion, the Court should not have declared the application admissible and should not have examined it on the merits for the following reasons.

The applicant has made full use of the domestic civil procedure and has challenged in the Supreme Court the non-enforcement of the judgment against the State enterprise Stroitelniy Kompleks (later it turned out, that the judgment was not enforced because the mail service had lost the writ of enforcement). As a result, the case was returned to the first-instance court (§ 8), a new writ of enforcement was issued (§ 10 ), the execution proceedings were resumed (§ 11 ), and even the allowance arrears fo r 2000–02 were partly paid (§ 14 ).

But the applicant has failed to challenge the discontinuation of the enforcement proceedings due to the enterprise ' s bankruptcy, and the Court points this out directly (§ 1 2 ). Still, under domestic law he could do it. The Federal Law on enforcement proceedings of 31 December 1999 states that ' a decision on the discontinuation or adjournment of enforcement proceedings may be challenged as established in the Codes of Civil and Commercial Procedures ' (article 24, part 4 of the Law).

As the enforcement proceedings had been discontinued due to the enterprise ' s bankruptcy, a challenge of this decision could have had certain legal implications. Under the Russian Civil Code, when a company is wound up, ' first are paid debts to the individuals arising from damage to life or health, by way of capitalisation of relevant instalments ' (Article 64, Part 1 of Civil Code). To this end, the wound-up company (or its appointed manager) must capitalise the funds needed for compensating the damage in future and transfer it to State social security. The Law on Insolvency (bankruptcy) states: ' On the individual ' s consent, his claim to the debtor in the amount of capitalised instalments passes to the State. In this case, the claim is also paid first ' (article 135, part 3 of the Law). Hence, when the enforcement proceedings were discontinued on 20 May 2003, the applicant ' s rights were protected by domestic means. The applicant has not used these means, apparently believing that they may be replaced by his application to the European Court. In my opinion, there is a manifest disrespect of the admissibility criteria of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.

The Court should have examined the merits of the application, only if it were manifestly admissible.

But even assuming that the application is admissible, it is hard to agree with the Court ' s findings set out in §§ 18 –1 9 of the judgment. Instead of investigating the existing legal remedies against the non-payment of social allowances (above I have tried to show some), the Court has hastily concluded that these remedies were inefficient. It is a pity that the text of the judgment has no section ' Relevant domestic law and practice ' . If it did have it, the colleagues ' findings might have been different.