European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg rules in favour of Montenegro

In the case of Vujović v. Montenegro, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found that there had been no violation of Article 6, paragraph 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This judgment of the European Court is of particular importance due to the fact that in the specific case the European Court did not reject application based on procedural grounds of inadmissibility, it already entered the merits of the case and found that the State of Montenegro did not violate the applicant's right.

The aforementioned case was first communicated to the Government of Montenegro as a well established case law concerning the violations of the Convention, and in accordance with that, offered the Government a court settlement. The Government, however, did not accept the offered court settlement in the case and managed to convince the European Court of its inadmissibility with the arguments it put forward in defence.

The applicant, Mr Igor Vujović, is a citizen of Montenegro and Norway, who in particular complained of a violation of Article 6 Paragraph1 of the Convention on the length of the criminal proceedings before the domestic courts, considering that the length of the criminal proceedings had been incompatible with the “reasonable time” requirement.

However, the Court found that the applicant was, in a number of cases, unreasonably absent from scheduled trials before the domestic courts, which contributed to the delay and duration of the proceedings. Furthermore, the European Court found that the applicant did not indicate any period of inactivity of domestic courts and found that the remaining length of the proceedings of about six years at three levels of jurisdiction could not be regarded as excessive or unreasonable length of the proceedings.

The European Court of Human Rights' judgement is final on the date of adoption and the applicant has no right of appeal.

The Vujović v. Montenegro judgement has been published today on the website of the European Court of Human Rights, and after it is translated into Montenegrin, it will be published on the website of the Supreme Court of Montenegro and in the Official Gazette of Montenegro.

Representative of Montenegro before the European Court of Human Rights Valentina Pavličić