BOSPHORUS HAVA YOLLARI TURİZM VE TİCARET ANONİM ŞİRKETİ
v. IRELAND JUDGMENT
45
Protocol No. 1 (see, mutatis mutandis, S.A. Dangeville, cited above, §§ 47
and 55).
151. The question is therefore whether, and if so to what extent, that
important general interest of compliance with Community obligations can
justify the impugned interference by the Irish State with the applicant
company's property rights.
152. The Convention does not, on the one hand, prohibit Contracting
Parties from transferring sovereign power to an international (including a
supranational) organisation in order to pursue cooperation in certain fields
of activity (see M. & Co., p. 144, and Matthews, § 32, both cited above).
Moreover, even as the holder of such transferred sovereign power, that
organisation is not itself held responsible under the Convention for
proceedings before, or decisions of, its organs as long as it is not a
Contracting Party (see Confédération française démocratique du travail v.
European Communities, no. 8030/77, Commission decision of 10 July 1978,
DR 13, p. 231; Dufay v. European Communities, no. 13539/88, Commission
decision of 19 January 1989, unreported; and M. & Co., p. 144, and
Matthews, § 32, both cited above).
153. On the other hand, it has also been accepted that a Contracting
Party is responsible under Article 1 of the Convention for all acts and
omissions of its organs regardless of whether the act or omission in question
was a consequence of domestic law or of the necessity to comply with
international legal obligations. Article 1 makes no distinction as to the type
of rule or measure concerned and does not exclude any part of a Contracting
Party's “jurisdiction” from scrutiny under the Convention (see United
Communist Party of Turkey and Others v. Turkey, judgment of 30 January
1998, Reports 1998-I, pp. 17-18, § 29).
154. In reconciling both these positions and thereby establishing the
extent to which a State's action can be justified by its compliance with
obligations flowing from its membership of an international organisation to
which it has transferred part of its sovereignty, the Court has recognised that
absolving Contracting States completely from their Convention
responsibility in the areas covered by such a transfer would be incompatible
with the purpose and object of the Convention; the guarantees of the
Convention could be limited or excluded at will, thereby depriving it of its
peremptory character and undermining the practical and effective nature of
its safeguards (see M. & Co., p. 145, and Waite and Kennedy, § 67, both
cited above). The State is considered to retain Convention liability in respect
of treaty commitments subsequent to the entry into force of the Convention
(see mutatis mutandis, Matthews, cited above, §§ 29 and 32-34, and Prince
Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein v. Germany [GC], no. 42527/98, § 47,
ECHR 2001-VIII).
155. In the Court's view, State action taken in compliance with such
legal obligations is justified as long as the relevant organisation is
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