34
BOSPHORUS HAVA YOLLARI TURİZM VE TİCARET ANONİM ŞİRKETİ
v. IRELAND JUDGMENT
117. The applicant company considered its position to be consistent with
Convention case-law. More generally, while the Convention did not exclude
the transfer of competences to international organisations, the State had to
continue to secure Convention rights (see T.I. v. the United Kingdom (dec.),
no. 43844/98, ECHR 2000-III, and M. & Co., cited above). The Convention
institutions had on numerous occasions examined the compatibility with the
Convention of the discretion exercised by a State in applying Community
law (see, inter alia, Van de Hurk v. the Netherlands, judgment of 19 April
1994, Series A no. 288; Procola v. Luxembourg, judgment of 28 September
1995, Series A no. 326; Cantoni and Hornsby, both cited above; Pafitis and
Others v. Greece, judgment of 26 February 1998, Reports 1998-I;
Matthews, cited above; S.A. Dangeville v. France, no. 36677/97, ECHR
2002-III; and Société Colas Est and Others v. France, no. 37971/97, ECHR
2002-III). The case-law of the ECJ itself supported the applicant company's
position (see Kondova, cited above, § 90), that case being the first in which,
according to the applicant company, the ECJ recognised that it could not
claim to be the final arbiter of questions of human rights as member States
remained answerable to this Court. The applicant company also relied on
Pellegrini v. Italy (no. 30882/96, ECHR 2001-VIII), where the Court found
a violation of Article 6 because the Italian courts did not satisfy themselves
as to the fairness of proceedings before the ecclesiastical courts of the Rome
Vicariate before enforcing a decision of those tribunals.
If the Court were to follow the Government's reliance on M. & Co.,
Waite and Kennedy and Beer and Regan, then any member State of the
European Community could, according to the applicant company, escape its
Convention responsibility once its courts had referred a question to the ECJ
and implemented its ruling. The percentage of domestic law sourced in the
European Community is significant and growing and the matters now
covered by Community law are increasingly broad and sensitive: to accept
that all State acts implementing a Community obligation fall outside its
Convention responsibility would create an unacceptable lacuna of human
rights protection in Europe.
118. In any event, the applicant company argued that the European
Community did not offer “equivalent protection”. The limited role of the
ECJ under Article 177 (now Article 234) has been outlined above: there was
no inherent jurisdiction in the ECJ to consider whether matters such as the
absence of compensation and discriminatory treatment of the applicant
company amounted to a breach of its property rights. Proceedings against a
member State for an act or omission allegedly in violation of Community
law could only be initiated before the ECJ by the European Commission or
another member State; individuals had to bring proceedings in the national
courts. A party to such domestic proceedings had no right to make an
Article 177 (now Article 234) reference, that being a matter for the domestic
court. As indicated in Kondova, cited above, if a Community provision was
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