56
BOSPHORUS HAVA YOLLARI TURİZM VE TİCARET ANONİM ŞİRKETİ
v. IRELAND JUDGMENT – CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE RESS
only be “comparable” and not “identical”, the result of the protection of the
Convention rights should be the same. It is undisputed that the level of
control extends to both procedural and substantive violations of the
Convention guarantees. Article 35 § 3 of the Convention refers to
applications which are manifestly ill-founded and the new Article 28 § 1 (b)
as inserted by Protocol No. 14 gives Committees the power to declare
applications which are manifestly well-founded admissible and render at the
same time a judgment on the merits, that is, in the wording of that new
Article, if the underlying question in the case concerns an interpretation or
application of the Convention (or its Protocols) which is already the subject
of well-established case-law of the Court. One would conclude that the
protection of the Convention right would be manifestly deficient if, in
deciding the key question in a case, the ECJ were to depart from the
interpretation or the application of the Convention or the Protocols that had
already been the subject of well-established ECHR case-law. In all such
cases, the protection would have to be considered to be manifestly deficient.
In other cases concerning new questions of interpretation or application of a
Convention right, it may be that the ECJ would decide in a way the ECHR
would not be prepared to follow in future cases, but in such cases it would
be difficult to say that the deficiency was already manifest. But even that
result should not be excluded ab initio. Accordingly, and relying on the
wording of the Convention and its Protocols, I do not see the “manifestly
deficient” level to be a major step in the establishment of a double standard.
Since the ECJ would, in a future case, be under an obligation to consider
whether there was already an interpretation or an application of the
Convention which was the subject of well-established ECHR case-law, I am
convinced that it is only in exceptional cases that the protection will be
found to have been manifestly deficient. In the light of this interpretation of
the judgment which confirms the ECJ's obligation to follow the “wellestablished case-law of the ECHR” I have agreed to the maxim in
paragraph 156.
4. It would probably have been possible to elaborate on the various
points made in paragraph 166 of the judgment. The very brief reference to
the nature of the interference, to the general interest pursued by the
impoundment and by the sanctions regime, and to the ECJ's ruling (in the
light of the opinion of the Advocate General) should not be seen as an open
door through which any future cases where State authorities apply
Community law can pass without any further scrutiny. The Court has
referred to the fact that there was no dysfunction of the mechanism of
control and of the observance of Convention rights. A dysfunction of the
observance of Convention rights would arise precisely in those cases where
the protection was manifestly deficient in the sense I have tried to explain. It
would probably have been useful to explain this in more detail to avoid the
impression that member States of the European Community live under a
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