In cases where the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recognizes a violation of the right to property enshrined in article 1 of Protocol 1 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the most impressive amounts of just satisfaction are awarded. In this context, non-compliance with court judgments is the form of this right violation representing the most critical issue among those established by the ECHR with regard to Ukraine.

This is the second of two articles dealing with the issue of non-compliance with court judgments. The previous one was published in No. 3/2020 “Law of Ukraine” under the title “The Issue of Non-Compliance with Court Judgments as Property Right Violation in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights. The Ukrainian Aspect. From Hornsby to Ivanov”. The article aims at exploring the practical aspects of this issue, in particular: prior attempts at resolving the issue concerned in Ukraine and the reasons for which they failed, and will also try to find out whether there is “light at the end of the tunnel”. Based on the results of the study, a conclusion is made about failure of the attempt to enforce Ivanov by introducing a single mechanism of payments under judgments adopted against public authorities and state-owned enterprises as provided for in the Law of Ukraine “On Guarantees by the State Concerning Enforcement of Court Judgments” and encompassed in Program 4040: firstly, it required considerable budgetary expenditure which were never available to the Ukrainian Government, and secondly, even if appropriate funds were found, it would turn out to be only a temporary solution because new debts would be accumulated with the same rate. Therefore, it is the integrated approach to the problem presented in the consolidated Government Action Plan and Strategy which has the chance to finally overcome this problem. At the same time, strong political will at the highest level of the Government and effective coordination between various public bodies is crucially important for overcoming this problem.

Bibliography

Journal articles

1. Kindt E, ‘Giving up on Individual Justice? The Effect of State Non-execution of a Pilot Judgment on Victims’ [2018] 36 (3) Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 173–88 (in English).

Websites

2. Kindt E, ‘Non-execution of a pilot judgment: ECtHR passes the buck to the Committee of Ministers in Burmych and others v. Ukraine at Strasbourg Observers’ (Strasbourg Observers, 26.102017) <https://strasbourgobservers.com/2017/10/26/non-executionofa-pilot-judgment-ecthr-passes-the-buck-to-the-committee-of-ministers-in-burmychandothers-v-ukraine> (accessed: 20.03.2020) (in English).