A decision based on secret reports depriving a party of their access violates the right to be heard
JUDGMENT
T.G. v. Croatia 11.07.2017 (no. 39701/14)
SUMMARY
Firearm license. Refusal to renew license. The case concerned the applicant’s complaint concerning the refusal to grant firearm license on the basis of confidential and non-reportable police reports. The administrative courts have decided that the hunting license was not properly renewed on the basis of confidential documents which the applicant could not have known and could not challenge. The European Court of Human Rights has held that there has been a violation of the fair trial.
PROVISION
Article 6 par. 1
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, T.G., is a Croatian national who was born in 1974. The case concerned his complaint about being refused a firearms license on the basis of undisclosed police reports.
T.G. was a member of a hunting association and spent his vacations hunting in Croatia. After having held a firearms license for hunting purposes in Croatia for ten years, he applied to renew it in 2011. The police, having conducted a background check which included reports that T.G. regularly abused alcohol, issued a report of their findings and refused his application. He challenged the decision before the Ministry of the Interior, which ordered the police to produce a new assessment of the background check. The second report provided further detail of the alleged alcohol abuse and confirmed these details with T.G.’s neighbours in Croatia, though their identities were classified. The Ministry of the Interior dismissed the complaint and T.G. challenged their decision before the administrative courts, which then upheld the refusal based on information contained in the confidential file. T.G. complained to the Constitutional Court that he had been denied access to the evidence containing allegations against him and that it had left him without opportunity to challenge them. The Constitutional Court dismissed the complaint as unfounded, holding that the police reports on his background check contained sufficient details regarding the refusal.
Relying in particular on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the European Convention on Human Rights, T.G. complained that the administrative proceedings had been unfair because the refusal to renew his firearms licence was based on police reports that had not been made available to him or his lawyer.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Violation of Article 6 § 1
Just satisfaction: T.G. did not submit a claim for just satisfaction within the time-limit fixed. The Court awarded him 336 euros (EUR) for costs and expenses.
