30 Legal Digest of International Fair Trial Rights Rights in Roche v the United Kingdom concluded that “the Court may not create through the interpretation of Article 6 § 1 a substantive right which has no legal basis in the State concerned”.69 Also, “article 6(1) extends only to ‘contestations’ (disputes) over (civil) ‘rights and obligations’ […]; it does not itself guarantee any particular content for (civil) ‘rights and obligations’ in the substantive law of the Contracting States.”70 In Powell and Rayner v the United Kingdom, the European Commission on Human Rights rejected the claim under Article 6(1) as manifestly ill-founded on the ground that the applicants had no “civil right” under English law to compensation for increased air traffic noise at Heathrow airport, other than the noise caused by aircraft flying in breach of aviation regulations.71 A distinction needs to be made, however, between substantive provisions of national law versus procedural provisions that may constitute a bar to bringing a civil claim to court.72 Whether a person has an actionable domestic claim may, in fact, depend not only on the substantive content of the civil right (as defined under national law) but also on the existence of procedural bars preventing or limiting the possibilities of bringing potential claims to court.73 It would not be consistent with the rule of law in a democratic society or with the basic principle underlying Article 6(1) if, for example, a State could remove from the jurisdiction of the courts a whole range of civil claims without restraint, or confer immunities from civil liability on large groups or categories of persons.74 At the same time, however, it should be noted that the European Court of Human Rights has applied a margin of appreciation in considering how the regulation of access to court (See also 2.1.1) is achieved by each country. In Markovic and Others v Italy, the European Court held that Article 6 was not applicable to a complaint for damages by the relatives of persons deceased in the NATO air strike on the Radio Televizije Srbije (RTS) building in Belgrade in April 1999. In its reasoning the European Court concluded that the decision adopted on the basis of Italian law did not amount to recognition of a procedural immunity from the lawsuit but was the result of the principles governing the substantive right of action in domestic law which excludes the possibility of the courts’ review of acts of foreign policy such as acts of war. 75 1.2.2 Nature of the right Once it has been established that the right or obligation exists in the national law, the next question to consider is whether the right is “civil” in nature. In this regard, the exclusive focus of the Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights has been on the nature of the right in question rather than on the status of one or more of the parties (whether governmental, parastatal or autonomous statutory entities), or of the domestic 69 Roche v the United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 926, paras 116–121; see also Markovic and Others v Italy [2006] ECHR 1141, para 93. 70 James and Others v the United Kingdom [1986] ECHR, para 81; see also Markovic and Others v Italy [2006] ECHR 1141, para 93; Fayed v the United Kingdom [1994] ECHR 27, para 65. 71 Powell and Rayner v the United Kingdom [1990] ECHR 2, para 35. 72 Markovic and Others v Italy [2006] ECHR 1141, para 94. 73 Fayed v the United Kingdom [1994] ECHR 27, para 65. 74 Markovic and Others v Italy [2006] ECHR 1141, para 97. 75 Markovic and Others v Italy [2006] ECHR 1141, para 113.