The European Court of Human Rights will be holding the following hearings in October 2002.

Grand Chamber [fn]

9 a.m. Odièvre v. France (application no. 42326/98) Hearing on the merits

Pascale Odièvre is a French national, who was born in 1965 and lives in Paris. She is unemployed.

Her application concerns the rules governing confidentiality on birth, which have prevented her from obtaining information about her natural family.

She was born on 23 March 1965 in Paris. Her mother sought confidentiality for the birth and completed a form at the Health and Social Security Department abandoning her rights to her child. The applicant was placed in the care of the Children’s Welfare and Protection of Youth Service and registered as being in State care. She was subsequently fully adopted by Mr and Mrs Odièvre, whose surname she continues to use.

The applicant consulted her file at the Children’s Welfare Service of the Seine département in 1990 and was able to obtain information of a general nature about her natural family. On 27 January 1998 she applied to the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance for an order "for disclosure of confidential information concerning her birth and permission to obtain copies of any documents, public records or full birth certificates". She explained to the court that she had learnt that her natural parents had had a son in 1963 and two other sons after 1965. However, the Children’s Welfare Service had refused to provide her with details regarding her brothers’ identity on the ground that it would entail a breach of confidence. She submitted that having discovered the existence of her brothers, her application for disclosure of information about her birth was well-founded.

On 2 February 1998 the court registrar returned the case file to the applicant’s lawyer stating "... it appears that the applicant should perhaps apply to the administrative court to obtain, if possible, an order requiring the authorities to disclose the information, although such an order would in any event contravene the Law of 8 January 1993". (The statute lays down that an application for disclosure of details identifying the natural mother is inadmissible if confidentiality was agreed at birth).

The applicant complains that she has been unable to obtain details identifying her natural family, contrary to Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights. She says that her inability to do so is highly damaging to her as it deprives her of the chance of reconstituting her life history. She further submits that the French rules on confidentiality governing birth amount to discrimination on the ground of birth, contrary to Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination).

9.30 a.m. Appleby & Others v. United Kingdom (no. 44306/98) Hearing on admissibility and the merits

The applicants are: Mary Eileen Appleby, a British citizen born in 1952; Pamela Beresford, a British citizen born in 1966; Robert Alphonsus Duggan, an Irish citizen born in 1947; and an environmental group, Washington First Forum. The three individual applicants, who all live in Washington, Tyne and Wear (England), set up Washington First Forum to campaign against a plan to build on the only public playing field in the vicinity of Washington town centre (part of the Princess Anne Park, known as the Arena).

In March and April 1998 the applicants set about collecting signatures for a petition to persuade the Council to reject the project. They tried to set up a stall and canvas views in "The Galleries", a shopping complex in Washington that had become the effective town centre. They were prevented from doing so, however, by Postel, the private company which had bought most of the shopping area and had, under domestic law, the power to exclude anyone conducting unauthorised activities on its land.

On or about 14 March 1998, the first applicant, together with her husband and son, set up two stands in the entrance to The Galleries shopping mall. However, security guards employed by Postel stopped them collecting signatures and forced them to remove their stands. The manager of the one of the shops in the mall gave the applicants permission to set up stands within that store. However permission was not granted in April 1998 when the applicants wished to collect signatures for a further petition.

The manager of the Galleries informed the applicants that permission had been refused because the owner took a strictly neutral stance on all political and religious issues.

However, the applicants claim other organisations have been allowed to carry out collections, set up stalls and displays within the Galleries, including the Stop Smoking Campaign (advertising display and distribution of nicotine patches), Royal British Legion (collection for Armistice Day), various photographers (advertising and taking photographs), British Gas (staffed advertising display) and Sunderland Council (concerning the future leadership of the Council).

The applicants complain that they have been prevented from meeting in their town centre to share information and ideas about proposed building plans. They rely on Articles 10 (freedom of expression), 11 (freedom of association) and 13 (right to an effective remedy).

2.30 p.m. Cordova v. Italy (nos. 40877/98 and 45649/99) Hearing on the merits

Agostino Cordova is an Italian national who was born in 1936 and lives in Naples. At the material time he was a public prosecutor in Palmi.

Cordova (no. 1)  The first application (no. 40877/98) concerns events which occurred in 1993 during an investigation conducted by the applicant as part of his duties. The person under investigation had had dealings with Francesco Cossiga, a former President of Italy who had become a "senator for life". Mr Cossiga sent the applicant a number of sarcastic letters and gave him some toys as a present. The applicant considered that his honour and reputation had been injured and lodged a criminal complaint against Mr Cossiga, who was prosecuted for insulting a public official. The applicant applied to join the proceedings as a civil party in June 1997.

The Senate considered that the acts of which Mr Cossiga was accused were covered by the immunity provided for in Article 68 § 1 of the Italian Constitution, as his opinions had been expressed in the performance of his parliamentary duties. Pursuant to that provision, the Messina magistrate held that the accused had no case to answer. The applicant asked the public prosecutor to appeal against that judgment, but his request was refused on the ground that the reasons given by the Senate were neither illogical nor manifestly arbitrary.

Cordova (no. 2)  The second application (no. 45649/99) concerns comments made at two election rallies in 1994 by Vittorio Sgarbi, a member of the Italian parliament. While speaking at the rallies, Mr Sgarbi launched a personal attack on the applicant in offensive terms. The applicant lodged a criminal complaint alleging aggravated defamation and applied to join the proceedings as a civil party.

Mr Sgarbi was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay damages. The magistrate held that his comments had not been made in the performance of his parliamentary duties and were therefore not covered by the parliamentary immunity provided for in Article 68 § 1 of the Constitution. The accused appealed unsuccessfully against that judgment. He then appealed to the Court of Cassation, which directed that the proceedings should be stayed and the matter referred to the Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber of Deputies expressed the view that Mr Sgarbi had been acting in the performance of his duties. In a judgment of 6 May 1998 the Court of Cassation quashed the trial and appeal courts’ decisions, holding that the Chamber of Deputies’ broad interpretation of the concept of "parliamentary duties", encompassing all acts of a political nature, even outside Parliament, was not manifestly at variance with the spirit of the Constitution.

Relying on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy), the applicant complains that the proceedings before the Messina magistrate and the Court of Cassation were unfair. On the basis of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), he also complains of the degree of freedom of expression enjoyed by Mr Cossiga and Mr Sgarbi.

2.30 p.m. Chevrol v. France (no. 49636/99) Hearing on the merits

Yamina Chevrol is a French national who was born in Algeria in 1942 and lives in Aubagne.

Having qualified as a doctor in Algeria in 1969 after graduating from the University of Algiers, she applied to be registered as a member of the Bouches-du-Rhône ordre des médecins (Medical Association) in 1987. Her application was unsuccessful and she reapplied in 1995, relying on the Government Declarations of 19 March 1962 on Algeria (the so-called Evian Agreements), which provide, among other things, for mutual recognition of qualifications awarded in Algeria and France. The département, regional and national councils of the ordre des médecins refused her applications. The applicant applied to the Conseil d’Etat, which asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to submit preliminary observations on her application. The Ministry expressed the view that the agreements could not be regarded as having legal force, because the condition of reciprocity laid down in Article 55 of the French Constitution had not been satisfied. In a judgment of 9 April 1999 the Conseil d’Etat dismissed the applicant’s application. It pointed out that it was not for the administrative courts to rule on the conditions for the implementation of a treaty and, on the basis of the Ministry’s observations, held that the applicant was not entitled to rely on the provisions of the agreements.

In a decision of 12 April 1999 the Council of the ordre des médecins for the département of Bouches-du-Rhône registered the applicant as a member of the ordre.

Relying on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing), the applicant complains about the interference by the executive with the Conseil d’Etat’s judicial powers. She argues that the Ministry’s intervention was crucial to the outcome of her case and that she had no means of challenging it.

9.00 a.m. Broniowski v. Poland (no. 31443/96) Hearing on admissibility and the merits

Jerzy Broniowski is a Polish national born in 1944 and living in Wieliczka (Poland).

The case concerns the alleged failure to satisfy the applicant’s entitlement to compensation for property (a house and land) in Lwów (now Lviv, in the Ukraine) which belonged to his grandmother when the area was still part of Poland, before the Second World War. That entitlement was first bequeathed to the applicant’s mother and, after her death in 1989, to the applicant.

The applicant’s grandmother along with many others who had been living in the Eastern provinces of pre-war Poland (which included large areas of present-day Belarus, Ukraine and territories around Vilnius in what is now Lithuania) was repatriated after Poland’s eastern border had been redrawn along the Bug River (whose central course formed part of the Curzon line), in the aftermath of the Second World War. The area was known as the "Borderlands" ("Kresy") and also, "territories beyond the Bug River" (“ziemie zabużańskie”).

Following the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, where this new border between the Soviet Union and Poland along the Curzon line had been agreed, and the so-called "republican agreements" between the Polish Committee of National Liberation and former Soviet Republics of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, Poland undertook to compensate those who had been "repatriated" from the "territories beyond the Bug River" and had had to abandon their properties. From 1944 to 1953 around 1,750,000 people were "repatriated" under the provisions of the republican agreements.

Since 1946 Polish law has entitled those repatriated in such circumstances to compensation in kind; they have been entitled to buy land from the State and have the value of the abandoned property deducted either from the fee for the so-called "perpetual use" of this land or from the price of the compensatory property or land.

However, since the entry into force of the Local Government Act of 10 May 1990, local administration, while still obliged to meet these compensation claims, has had insufficient land to meet the various demands.

The applicant, along with around 90,000 others entitled to compensatory property, has not yet received compensation for the property abandoned by his grandmother - valued at 1,949,560 old Polish zlotys. According to the applicant, he has received only approximately 4% of its value (ie. of the compensation due to him) in the form of the right of perpetual use of a small building plot which his mother bought from the State in 1981.

He relies on Article 1 of Protocol No.1 (protection of property).

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