CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 24 avril 2007

.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 } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .s4B8D41EE { font-family:Arial; font-size:10pt } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS   254 24.4.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT MATYJEK v. POLAND   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Matyjek v. Poland (application no. 38184/03).   The Court held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights taken in conjunction with Article 6 § 3 of the Convention.   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court held, unanimously, that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for non-pecuniary damage and awarded the applicant 1,220 euros (EUR) for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicant, Tadeusz Matyjek, is a Polish national who was born in 1935 and lives in Warsaw.   This is the first judgment in a case concerning so-called “lustration proceedings” in Poland. These are proceedings aimed at exposing persons who had worked for or collaborated with the State’s security services during the communist period.   The Law of 11 April 1997 (the “1997 Lustration Act”) obliged persons exercising public functions in Poland to disclose whether they had worked for or collaborated with the State’s security services (the “secret services”) between 1944 and 1990. Mr Matyjek, who had been a member of the Polish Parliament ( Sejm ), declared that he had not collaborated with the secret services during this period.   Subsequently, proceedings were brought against Mr Matyjek by the Commissioner of Public Interest. Hearings were held in camera between September and October 1999.   On 17 December 1999 the Warsaw Court of Appeal, relying on an expert opinion prepared by the State Security Bureau’s Department of Criminology and Chemistry, found that Mr   Matyjek had been a deliberate and secret collaborator with the secret services and that he had therefore lied in his lustration declaration. The operative part of the judgment was served on him, but the reasoning was considered “secret”. The reasoning could only be consulted in the court’s “secret registry”.   Mr Matyjek appealed, maintaining that his contacts with the Civil Militia and a secret service agent had been purely private and had never taken the form of conscious collaboration. He also requested the examination of more witnesses and called for an independent opinion to be commissioned from an expert who did not belong to an agency of the State Security Bureau.   On 17 February 2000 Mr Matyjek’s appeal was dismissed, the written reasoning again not being served on him.   Subsequently, the Supreme Court quashed that judgment, finding a serious procedural shortcoming in so far as Mr Matyjek’s request to call two additional witnesses had been disregarded.   In December 2000 the Head of the State Security Bureau lifted the confidentiality restrictions from Mr   Matyjek’s case-file.   In the course of further proceedings, the Court of Appeal examined witnesses named by Mr   Matyjek, received further documents concerning Mr   Matyjek from the State Security Bureau, held a public hearing and ordered an expert opinion from the Warsaw University Institute of Criminology.   However, following another hearing held in camera , the Warsaw Court of Appeal found that Mr Matyjek had lied in his lustration declaration. In May 2003 the Supreme Court finally dismissed Mr   Matyjek’s cassation appeal.   According to the domestic law in force at the relevant time, the Court of Appeal’s judgment of 17   February 2000 was considered final. Therefore, with effect from that date Mr Matyjek was deprived of his mandate as a Member of Parliament and was banned from being a candidate in elections or from holding any other public office for the next 10 years.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 15 October 2003 and declared admissible on 30 May 2006.   The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Warsaw, Poland) has been allowed to take part in the proceedings as a third party.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Nicolas Bratza (British), President , Giovanni Bonello (Maltese), Kristaq Traja (Albanian), Lech Garlicki (Polish), Ljiljana Mijović (citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Ján Šikuta (Slovak), Pâivi Hirvelä (Finnish), judges , and also Lawrence Early , Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaint   Relying on Article 6 of the Convention, Mr Matyjek complained about the unfairness of the lustration proceedings against him. He particularly referred to the proceedings’ unequal and secret nature, document confidentiality and the unfair procedures governing access to the case file.   Decision of the Court In its admissibility decision of 30 May 2006 the Court already decided that Article 6 of the Convention under its criminal head applied to the lustration proceedings.   The Government had complained that Mr Matyjek had not exhausted domestic remedies as he had not raised his allegation about the unfairness of the lustration proceedings in the domestic courts. The Court considered that the question whether he could have effectively challenged the aspects of the lustration proceedings was linked to the assessment of the merits of his complaints and would be considered together with them.   The Court considered it appropriate to examine Mr Matyjek’s complaints under Article 6 § 1 and § 3 taken together.   Article 6 § 1 in conjunction with Article 6 § 3   The Court recalled the judgment Turek v. Slovakia (see press release no. 79 of 14.2.2006), which also dealt with lustration proceedings. In that case, the Court had been of the view that it could not be assumed that it was still in the public interest to continue restricting access to classified material under former regimes. Indeed, lustration proceedings, by their very nature, aimed to establish facts dating from the communist era and were not directly linked to the functioning of the security services at the time of the Turek case. Furthermore, if a State were to adopt lustration measures, the persons against whom proceedings were brought should benefit from all procedural guarantees under the Convention. Denying access to a person’s classified file, in the context of lustration proceedings, severely curtailed those persons’ ability to contradict the security services’ statements. The Court found that those considerations were also relevant to the present case.   At least part of the documents relating to Mr Matyjek’s lustration had been classified as “top secret”. The security services had had the power to lift that confidentiality rating, which it had done in December 2000 in respect of certain material in the case file. However, although Mr Matyjek had been allowed access to his file from that date onwards, restrictions still applied to any documents subsequently added to the file. The Government had acknowledged that documents had indeed been added to the file after December 2000.   The Court also observed that the first stage of the proceedings had been all the more crucial for Mr   Matyjek as the judgment of 17   February 2000 was considered final under domestic law and the sanctions ordered by the Lustration Act took effect from that date onwards.   At the pre-trial stage, the Commissioner of Public Interest had had right of access to all material on Mr Matyjek collated by the former security services. When the trial had begun, Mr Matyjek had been given access to his file but any confidential documents could only be consulted in the “secret registry” of the court. No copies could be made of material in the file. Any notes taken when consulting the file or during hearings, which were mostly held in camera , had to be made in special notebooks which were then sealed and left at the “secret registry”. Identical restrictions were imposed on his lawyer. Mr Matyjek had had to rely solely on memory and this had prevented him from using the notes effectively or showing them to an expert for opinion. Even more importantly, he claimed that he had not been allowed to use those notes to defend himself during his trial, an allegation which had not been contested by the Government.   Given what had been at stake in the lustration proceedings – namely Mr Matyjek’s good name, loss of his seat in Parliament and a ban from holding public office for 10   years – the Court considered it had been important for him to have unrestricted access to his file and to any notes he had made, including, if necessary, the possibility of obtaining copies of relevant documents.   The Court was not persuaded by the Government's argument that the Commissioner of Public Interest had been subject to similar restrictions at the trial stage as regards access to confidential documents. In fact, he had had powers identical to those of a public prosecutor. He had had right of access to all documentation on Mr Matyjek and could hear witnesses and order expert opinions. He had had at his disposal staff who had had official clearance for access to classified documents and who had been employed to analyse lustration declarations and prepare case files for trial.   Finally, the Court observed that Mr Matyjek had only been notified of the operative parts of the judgments given on 17   December 1999 and 17 February 2000.   The Court accepted that, in certain situations, there could be a compelling reason for maintaining secrecy of documents, even those produced under the former regime. Nevertheless, such a situation could only arise exceptionally. It was for the Government to prove the existence of such an interest and should be the exception rather than the rule.   A system in which the outcome of lustration trials depended on the reconstruction of former secret service operations, with most of the relevant documentation remaining classified and the decision to maintain confidentiality left within the power of the current secret services, created a situation in which a person involved in lustration proceedings was put at a clear disadvantage.   Within that context, the Court found that Mr Matyjek’s ability to prove that he had not been guilty of “intentional and secret collaboration” with the communist ‑ era secret services had been significantly curtailed. It followed that that an unrealistic burden had been placed on Mr   Matyjek, which had not respected the principle of equality of arms.   Given the Government's statement that the rules on access to classified files had been regulated by successive laws on State secrets and the Code of Criminal Procedure and that those legal provisions had been complied with in this case, the Court was not persuaded that Mr Matyjek, in his appeals or cassation appeals, could have successfully challenged the domestic law in force. It further pointed out that the Lustration Act had on several occasions been unsuccessfully challenged before the Constitutional Court and that the Government had not referred to any other domestic remedy at Mr Matyjek’s disposal by which to challenge the legal framework of lustration proceedings. Consequently, the Government's objection as to the exhaustion of domestic remedies was rejected.   The Court concluded that the lustration proceedings against the applicant, taken as a whole, were unfair under Article 6 § 1 taken together with Article   6   § 3 and there had, accordingly, been a violation of those provisions.   ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   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) Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30)   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] Under Article 43 of the Convention, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 ‑ member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer. [2] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.