Published on 22 May 2023

SECOND SECTION

Application no. 38727/21 Ivan LAZIĆ against Croatia lodged on 29 July 2021 communicated on 5 May 2023

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The case concerns preventive confiscation of weapons from the applicant.

The applicant is a disabled person (lost both of his legs in 1959) who has practiced shooting for a number of years, won medals in different competitions, led the national shooting team of persons with disabilities, and ultimately presided a local shooting club.

In 2015 minor-offence proceedings were instituted against him on charges of not allowing the police on one occasion to verify the conditions for the safekeeping of his weapons. He was finally acquitted since the new law on weapons no longer penalised the behaviour for which he was charged. In the same set of proceedings, however, the domestic courts confiscated three pistols owned by the applicant. In particular, they noted that in 2017 the applicant had been finally convicted for sexually abusing a child and thus held that the pistols should be confiscated from him for the purpose of protecting general safety and morals, as allowed by section 76a of the Minor Offences Act.

The applicant complains, relying on Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 thereto, about the arbitrariness of the domestic courts’ decision to confiscate his weapons. Notably, he complains that the criminal conviction on which the domestic courts had based the confiscation decision had nothing to do with the minor-offence proceedings against him, in which he was acquitted, and alleges that there was therefore no legal basis to confiscate his pistols. He further complains that the domestic courts entirely failed to take into account that shooting constituted an important aspect of his life and that he used the confiscated pistols to generate means for his subsistence.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Was the confiscation of the applicant’s pistols lawful and did it strike a fair balance between the demands of the general and the private interests involved in the case, as required by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention (see Megadat.com SRL v. Moldova , no. 21151/04, § 74, ECHR 2008 and Paulet v. the United Kingdom , no. 6219/08, §§ 68-69, 13 May 2014, and compare with the Croatian Constitutional Court’s decision no. U-III-5501/13 of 29 March 2018; and see also, mutatis mutandis , Boček v. the Czech Republic (dec.), no. 49474/99, 24 October 2000, and Palmén v. Sweden (dec.), no. 38292/15, §§ 25-27, 22 March 2016)?

2. Could the confiscation proceedings be considered fair for the purposes of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention? In particular, was the applicant’s right to a reasoned decision respected, given the manner in which the domestic courts examined his case (see Moreira Ferreira v. Portugal (no. 2) [GC], no. 19867/12, §§ 83-84, 11 July 2017)?