BOSPHORUS HAVA YOLLARI TURİZM VE TİCARET ANONİM ŞİRKETİ
v. IRELAND JUDGMENT – CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE RESS
55
ECR II-2365 (Court of First Instance) and Case C-263/02 P [2004] ECR I3425 (ECJ)). See also the ECJ's judgment in Unión de Pequeños
Agricultores v. Council of the European Union (Case C-50/00 P [2002]
ECR I-6677). One should not infer from paragraph 162 of the judgment in
the present case that the Court accepts that Article 6 § 1 does not call for a
more extensive interpretation. Since the guarantees of the Convention only
establish obligations “of result”, without specifying the means to be used, it
seems possible to conclude that the protection of fundamental rights,
including those of the Convention, by Community law can be considered to
have been “equivalent” (see paragraph 165 of the judgment), even if the
protection of the Convention by the ECJ is not a direct one but rather an
indirect one through different sources of law, namely the general principles
of Community law. The criticism has sometimes been made that these
general principles of Community law do not, as interpreted by the case-law
of the ECJ, fulfil the required standard of protection, as they are limited by
considerations of the general public interest of the European Community.
This reasoning makes it rather difficult for the ECJ to find violations of
these general principles of Community law. The Court's analysis of the
“equivalence” of the protection is a rather formal one, and relates only to the
procedures of protection and not to the jurisprudence of the ECJ in relation
to the various substantive Convention guarantees: a major part of the
jurisprudence of the ECJ on the level and intensity of the protection of
property rights and the application of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 is missing.
But it is to be expected in future cases that the presumption of Convention
compliance should and will be enriched by considerations about the level
and intensity of protection of a specific fundamental right guaranteed by the
Convention. In my view, one cannot say once and for all that, in relation to
all Convention rights, there is already such a presumption of Convention
compliance because of the mere formal system of protection by the ECJ. It
may be expected that the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights
of the European Union, if it comes into force, may enhance and clarify this
level of control for the future.
3. The Court decided that the presumption can only be rebutted if, in the
circumstances of a particular case, it is considered that the protection of the
Convention rights was manifestly deficient. The protection was manifestly
deficient when there has, in procedural terms, been no adequate review in
the particular case such as: when the ECJ lacks competence (as in Segi and
Gestoras Pro-Amnistía and Others v. Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark,
Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Sweden (dec.),
nos. 6422/02 and 9916/02, ECHR 2002-V); when the ECJ has been too
restrictive in its interpretation of individual access to it; or indeed where
there has been an obvious misinterpretation or misapplication by the ECJ of
the guarantees of the Convention right. Even if the level of protection must
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