It is against this background that the Committee is brought to consider the case of Czernin v. Czech Republic, No. 823/1998. Here, the Committee has challenged the state party not on the grounds of denial of equal treatment, but on a question of process – finding that the administrative authorities of the state party had “refuse[d] to carry out the relevant decisions of the courts” of the state party concerning property restoration. remedy, including the requirement that its administrative authorities act in conformity with the decisions of the courts. 10. Bearing in mind that, by becoming a party to the Optional Protocol, the State party has recognized the competence of the Committee to determine whether there has been a violation of the Covenant or not, and that, pursuant to article 2 of the Covenant, the State party has undertaken to ensure to all individuals within its territory or subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognised in the Covenant and to provide an effective and enforceable remedy in case a violation has been established, the Committee wishes to receive from the State party, within 90 days, information about the measures taken to give effect to the Committee’s views. The author’s father, accompanied by his wife, left for Austria in December 1945, after interrogation in prison by the Soviet secret services NKVD and GPU. In 1989, after the fall of the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia, the author, as sole heir, sought restitution of his father’s property, and in 1995, sought to renew his parents’ applications for restoration of Czech citizenship. Since that time, the Czech Constitutional Court, the Prague High Court, and the Prague Town Court have, respectively, chastised the Czech Interior Ministry for failure to act upon the author’s application, erroneous reliance on a 1993 citizenship law, and the absence of “necessary argumentation” concerning his father’s asserted anti-Nazi posture (required for retention of Czech citizenship, under the post-war decree no. 33/1945 of Czech president Eduard Benes, in the case of ethnic Germans). APPENDIX Individual Opinion (dissenting) by Committee member Ruth Wedgwood Eastern Europe has enjoyed democracy for more than a decade. Over that period, the Human Rights Committee has been presented with a number of cases, asking whether refugees from a former communist regime are entitled to the restoration of their confiscated properties, and if so, under what conditions. In one sense, this case is simpler than the previous cases, since the issue is process, rather than the limits of permissible substantive grounds. Nonetheless, one should note that the courts of the Czech Republic have, ultimately, sought to provide an effective remedy to the authors, in the consideration of their claims. Many democracies have seen administrative agencies that are reluctant to reach certain results, and the question is whether there is a remedy within the system for a subordinate agency’s failure to impartially handle a claim. One could not adopt any per se rule that three rounds of appellate litigation amounts to proof that an applicant has been deprived of a right to a fair hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal, especially since here the appellate courts have acted to restrain the administrative agency in question on its various grounds of denial of the author’s claims. The Committee has not held that administrative proceedings fall within the full compass of Article 14. In four Views concerning the Czech Republic, the Committee has concluded that the right to private property, as such, is not protected under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but that conditions for the restoration of property cannot be unfairly discriminatory. In the first case of this series, Simunek v. Czech Republic, No. 516/1992, the Committee invoked the norm of “equal protection of the law” as recognized under article 26 of the Covenant. The Committee held that a State cannot impose arbitrary conditions for the restitution of confiscated property. In particular, the Committee held that restoration of private property must be available even to persons who no longer enjoy national citizenship and are no longer permanent residents – at least when the State party, under its prior communist regime, was “responsible for the departure” of the claimants. See Views of the Committee, No. 516/1992, paragraph 11.6. The Committee has followed these subsequent cases, including Adam v. Czech No. 586/1994; Blazek et al. v. Czech No. 857/1999; and Des Fours Walderode Republic, No. 747/1997. Equally, this case does not touch upon the post-war circumstances of the mandatory transfer of the Sudeten German population, a policy undertaken after the National Socialists’ catastrophic misuse of the idea of German selfdetermination. Though population transfers, even as part of a peace settlement, would not be easily accepted under modern human rights law, the wreckage of post-war Europe brought a different conclusion. Nor has the author challenged, and the Committee does not question, the authority of the 1945 presidential decree, which required that ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland who wished to remain in Czechoslovakia, had to demonstrate their wartime opposition to Germany’s fascist regime. A new democracy, with an emerging economy, may also face some practical difficulties in unraveling the violations of private ownership of property that lasted for fifty years. In all of these respects, the State party is bound to act with fidelity to the Covenant, yet the Committee must also act with a sense of its limits. views in Republic, Republic, v. Czech Committee member Nisuke Ando, writing individually in Adam v. Czech Republic, No. 586/1994, properly pointed out that traditionally, private international law has permitted States to restrict the ownership of immovable properties to citizens. But a totalitarian regime that forces its political opponents to flee, presents special circumstances. And there is no showing that the Czech Republic has, in regard to new purchasers of real property, required either citizenship or permanent residence. 84