EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

849

27.11.2008

Press release issued by the Registrar

HEARING IN DECEMBER

The European Court of Human Rights will be holding the following hearing in December 2008:

Tuesday 2 December: 9 a.m.

Chamber hearing on the merits and admissibility

Savino v. Italy (application no. 17214/05)

Persichetti v. Italy (no. 20329/05)

Borgo and Others v. Italy (no. 42113/04)

The cases concern three applications lodged by seven Italian nationals, Pericle Savino, Attilio Persichetti, Andrea Borgo, Davide Carbonara, Andrea Fantoni, Domenico Giordani and Daniela Colasanti, who were born in 1955, 1948, 1966, 1976, 1971 and 1974 respectively. Mr Savino lives in Civitella San Paolo (Italy). The other applicants live in Rome.

Savino and Persichetti¹

These two applicants, a surveyor and an architect, are employees of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Parliament). They applied to their administration for a special project allowance (incentivo di progettazione) and the first applicant also requested the reimbursement of insurance contributions.

The dispute was brought before the Judicial Committee for officials of the Chamber of Deputies. In decisions of February 2004 the Committee partly upheld the applicants’ claims and granted the first applicant’s specific request.

The administration appealed to the Judicial Section of the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies and requested a stay of execution of the decisions.

In decisions of October 2004 the Judicial Section of the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, whilst finding inadmissible the requests for a stay of execution as they were out of time, upheld the administration’s appeals on the merits and annulled the Committee’s decisions.

Borgo and Others

In August 2000 the Italian Chamber of Deputies announced a competition to fill 130 posts of parliamentary assistant (commessi). The applicants were selected and invited to sit the written examination.

Not being on the short-list of candidates who passed the written examination, they appealed to the Judicial Committee for officials of the Chamber of Deputies. They complained about the organisation of the examination and the criteria adopted for assessment of the papers. They sought the annulment of the administration’s decision not to include them on the short-list of candidates admitted to the oral examination and, at the same time, the stay of execution of that decision. In decisions of May 2002 the Committee upheld the applicants’ appeals.

The administration of the Chamber of Deputies appealed to the Judicial Section of the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies and also requested the stay of execution of the Committee’s decisions. The Section upheld the administration’s appeal. The applicants appealed to the Court of Cassation.

The Court of Cassation declared inadmissible the applicants’ appeal against the decisions of the internal judicial bodies of the Chamber of Deputies.

Complaints

The applicants complain that they had not had access to a “tribunal”, within the meaning of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the European Convention on Human Rights, for the adjudication of their claims. They argue that the Judicial Committee and Section for officials of the Chamber of Deputies were not tribunals established by law or independent and impartial as provided for by the Convention.

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Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on its Internet site (http://www.echr..coe.int).

Press contacts 
Adrien Raif-Meyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 33 37) 
Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) 
Sania Ivedi (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 59 45) 

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

¹ These summaries by the Registry do not bind the Court.