CEDH · PRESS;ADMISSIBILITYDECISIONS;ENG — 29 juin 2006

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s40F41F73 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s33165EBA { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s9FF10068 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt } .s2840CEAF { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s4BAE41EE { font-family:Arial; font-size:11pt } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS 388 29.6.2006   Press release issued by the Registrar   ADMISSIBILITY DECISION MATYJEK v. POLAND   A Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has declared admissible the application lodged in the case of Matyjek v. Poland (application no. 38184/03). (The decision is available in English and in French.)   Summary of the facts   The applicant, Tadeusz Matyjek, is a Polish national who was born in 1935 and lives in Warsaw, Poland.   Following the entry into force of the 1997 Lustration Act [1] , Mr Matyjek, who had been a member of the Sejm (Poland’s Parliament consists of two houses, the Sejm and the Senat), made a declaration that he had not collaborated with the communist-era secret services.   On 17 December 1999 Warsaw Court of Appeal found that the applicant had submitted an untrue lustration declaration because he had collaborated with the State’s secret services. The operative part of the judgment was served on the applicant on 3 January 2000. However, the reasoning was considered “secret” and, in accordance with Article   100 §   5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, could only be consulted in the secret registry of that court.   The applicant appealed unsuccessfully. The appeal court informed him that, due to the confidential nature of the case, the written reasoning for the judgment would not be served on him but could be consulted in the secret registry.   On 10 October 2000 the Supreme Court quashed the Court of Appeal’s judgment and remitted the case to it. The Supreme Court found that the applicant’s motion to hear two additional witnesses had been disregarded, which constituted a serious procedural shortcoming.   On 20 December 2000 the Head of the State Security Bureau lifted the confidentiality restrictions in respect of all the materials concerning the case.   On 25 January 2001 Warsaw Court of Appeal quashed the impugned judgment and remitted the case to the first-instance court. On 1 June 2001 the court held a public hearing. Subsequently, on 28   June and 4 December 2001, the hearings were held at least partly in camera. On 4 December 2001 Warsaw Court of Appeal gave judgment, again finding that the applicant had lied in his lustration declaration. The applicant appealed unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court. Complaint   The applicant complains in particular that he was unable to defend himself adequately as he was prevented from taking notes during the court proceedings and that he did not have proper access to the case file. He relies on Article 6 (right to a fair hearing) of the European Convention on Human Rights.   Procedure   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 4 December 2003.   Decision of the Court [2]   Article 6   Although, under Polish domestic law, lustration proceedings are not qualified as “criminal”, the Court considered that they had features which had a strong criminal connotation. In particular, the Lustration Act provided that matters not regulated by it were subject to the relevant provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Court also noted, among other things, that the lustration proceeding were based on the model of a Polish criminal trial and that the rules of the Code of Criminal Procedure were directly applicable.   Considering the nature of the offence, the Court found that the misconduct committed by the applicant consisted of his having lied in a declaration which he had a statutory obligation to submit. An obligation to submit a declaration was rather a common one, embracing for example declarations of means submitted by members of parliament and many other public officials and the obligation on all tax payers to submit a tax return. A breach of the obligation to state the truth on such occasions was regarded as an offence under domestic law and normally led to sanctions, including those of a criminal nature. The Court considered that the offence of making an untrue statement in a lustration declaration was very similar. Moreover, according to the ordinary meaning of the terms, it was analogous to the offence of perjury, which, outside the lustration context, would normally have led to prosecution under criminal ‑ law provisions.   The Court also noted that the legal provision infringed by the applicant concerned a vast group of citizens, born before May 1972, who not only held many types of public office, but also wished to exercise professions such as those of barrister, public servant, judge or prosecutor, or intended to stand for presidential or parliamentary election. The proceedings before the lustration court were to establish the truthfulness of their lustration declarations; they were not about scrutinising the past of those people. The lustration court decided whether the person subject to lustration violated the law by submitting a false declaration. If such a finding was made, statutory sanctions were imposed. Thus, the lustration procedure in Poland was not aimed at punishing acts committed during the communist regime. That approach distinguished the nature of lustration in Poland from the solutions adopted in other countries.   As regards the nature and degree of severity of the penalty imposed on the applicant, the Court first noted that the Act provided for an automatic and uniform sanction if the person subject to lustration had been considered by a final judgment to have lied in her or his lustration declaration. A final judgment to that effect entailed the dismissal of the person from public office and prevented her or him from applying for a large number of public posts for ten years. It was true that neither imprisonment nor a fine could be imposed on someone who had been found to have submitted a false declaration. Nevertheless, the Court noted that the prohibition on practising certain professions (political or legal) for a long period of time might have a very serious impact on a person, depriving him or her of the possibility of continuing professional life. That sanction should thus be regarded as having at least a partly punitive and deterrent character.   The applicant, who is a politician, as a result of having been deemed a “lustration liar” by a final judgment, lost his seat in Parliament and could not be a candidate for future elections for ten years. The Court considered that, given its nature and duration, the sanction provided by the Lustration Act had to be considered as detrimental to and as having serious consequences for the applicant.   The Court concluded that the nature of the offence, taken together with the nature and severity of the penalties, was such that the charges against the applicant constituted criminal charges within the meaning of Article 6. Article 6 therefore applied to the lustration proceedings under its “criminal” limb.   The Court also decided to join the Government’s plea of inadmissibility on the ground of non-exhaustion of domestic remedies to the merits of the case finding that those matters would more appropriately be examined at the same time as the substance of the applicant’s complaint. The Court concluded that the complaint raised serious issues of fact and law under the Convention, the determination of which should depend on an examination of the case on its merits. The complaint was not manifestly ill ‑ founded and no other ground for declaring it inadmissible had been established. The Court therefore, unanimously, declared the application admissible.   ***   The decision is available on the Court’s Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ). Judgment will be delivered at a later date.   Press Contacts   Emma Hellyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15) Stéphanie Klein (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54) Beverley Jacobs (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 21)   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. [1] The 1997 Act requires public sector employees who worked for or collaborated with the State’s security services between 1944 and 1990 to admit that they had done so in an official declaration.   [2] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.