Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook for in the Convention and impedes the proper conduct of the proceedings before the Court.550 In Petrović v. Serbia the Court qualified abuse generally as “the harmful exercise of a right for purposes other than those for which it is designed.”551 The standards are rather applicant-friendly when it comes to insult against the Court itself, prompting a rejection for abusiveness only if the Court “is of the opinion that [an] applicant’s allegations [against it] are intolerable, exceeding the bounds of normal criticism, albeit misplaced, and amount to contempt of court.”552 This ground of inadmissibility has been used by the Court as a tool to weed out vexatious applications that hinder it in carrying out its Article 19 duty to ensure observance of the obligations undertaken by the Contracting Parties in the Convention. It must be stressed that any attempt to mislead the Court in its examination of the application, for example by forging documents,553 by deliberately concealing relevant facts or by knowingly submitting incomplete and therefore misleading information to the Court,554 will result in inadmissibility. In particular, if missing information concerns the very core of the case and no sufficient explanation is given for the failure to disclose that information,555 the Court may conclude that there has been an abuse of the right of application. Also, an intentional breach of the duty of confidentiality in friendly settlement negotiations, provided for under Article 39 § 2 of the Convention and Rule 62 § 2 of the Rules of Court, may be considered as an abuse of the right of application.556 “The rule of confidentiality in respect of friendly-settlement negotiations is especially important because it aims to protect the parties and the Court itself from any political or other kind of pressure.”557 The Court receives a considerable number of applications that concern frivolous and repeated complaints by vexatious applicants. In the case of Philis v. Greece the Commission observed that the applicant had already introduced five applications 550 See Miroļubovs and Others v. Latvia, no. 798/05, 15 September 2009, §§ 62 and 65. 551 Petrović v. Serbia (dec.), no. 56551/11, 18 October 2011. 552 Milan Řehák v. the Czech Republic (dec.), 67208/01, 18 May 2004, the applicant here interestingly criticized, inter alia, the fact that an application of his had been rejected by a Committee of the Court, stating that “not even criminal communist tribunals sent their decisions without reasoning,” but then progressed to insult the Court’s personnel as KGB agents and the like. 553 See Varbanov v. Bulgaria, no. 31365/96, 5 October 2000, § 36; Popov v. Moldova (No. 1), no. 74153/01, 18 January 2005, § 48; Rehak v. Czech Republic (dec.), no. 67208/01, 18 May 2004; Kérétchachvili v. Georgia (dec.), no. 5667/02, 2 May 2006. In Mohammad Hossein Bagheri and Malihe Maliki (dec.), no. 30164/06, 15 May 2007, for instance, the applicants had relied in forged decisions of Iranian Revolutionary Tribunals to support their claims of a treat of persection upon return to their country of origin. 554 See Hüttner v. Germany (dec.), no. 23130/04, 9 June 2006. 555 Poznanski and Others v. Germany (dec.), no. 25101/05, 3 July 2007. 556 Popov v. Moldova (No. 1), no. 74153/01, 18 January 2005, § 48; Miroļubovs and Others v. Latvia, no. 798/05, 15 September 2009, § 66, 15 September 2009, and Benjocki and Others v. Serbia (dec.), nos. 5958/07, 6561/07, 8093/07 and 9162/07, 15 December 2009. 557 Rauf Abbasov and Others v. Azerbaijan, no. 36609/08, 28 May 2013, § 29. 148

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents