issued by the Registrar of the Court  
ECHR 229 (2020)  
30.07.2020  
Remedies for excessive length of proceedings in Croatia found to be largely  
ineffective between March 2013 and May 2019  
The cases of Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia (application no. 31386/17) and Marić v. Croatia  
(no. 9849/15) concerned complaints about violations of the right to a fair trial within a reasonable  
time and the lack of effective domestic remedies for such complaints.  
In Chamber judgments1 in the cases the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that  
there had been:  
a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial/length of proceedings) of the European Convention  
on Human Rights, and,  
a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention.  
In Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia, the Court found that civil proceedings over property rights of more  
than 15 years had breached “the reasonable time” requirement of the Convention. The applicants’  
complaint to the Constitutional Court had not been an effective remedy as that court had not taken  
account of the overall length of the proceedings, just a much shorter period of five months.  
The Court found that the length of the civil proceedings on compensation in the case of Marić v.  
Croatia which had lasted just over four years, was also excessive.  
Furthermore, it found that the applicant had not been obliged to use the remedies for protracted  
proceedings under the 2013 Courts Act as they were not effective. In particular, the remedy to  
accelerate the proceedings could only be applied once they had already become excessively long  
while the compensatory remedy had too many restrictions.  
The Court has also today delivered a judgment in Glavinić and Marković v. Croatia (application nos.  
11388/15 and 25605/15), which concerns similar issues.  
Principal facts  
Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia  
The applicants were Smiljka Kirinčić, Branka Ivančić and Smiljan Kirinčić. They are Croatian nationals  
born in 1932, 1952 and 1956 and live in Dobrinj and Rijeka (all in Croatia).  
Between May 2000 and May 2015 the applicants, represented by the third applicant, were involved  
in proceedings to regulate the ownership of previously nationalised property. A first-instance  
decision in civil proceedings in October 2002, upheld on appeal in December 2006, found for them.  
In February 2007 one of the defendants in the civil proceedings lodged an appeal on points of law,  
which the Supreme Court eventually dismissed in May 2015.  
In November 2014 the applicants lodged a request for protection of the right to a hearing within a  
reasonable time with the President of the Supreme Court, a remedy under the 2013 Courts Act  
1. Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, these Chamber judgments are not final. During the three-month period following delivery,  
any party may request that a case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges  
considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final  
judgment. If a referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.  
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution.  
Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution.  
designed to accelerate proceedings. In May 2015 the President of the Supreme Court found the  
request well-founded and ordered that a decision on the appeal on points of law be issued within six  
months. However, a judgment had already been issued two days earlier, which was served on the  
applicants in October 2015.  
The applicants lodged a constitutional complaint about the length of the proceedings in January  
2015. The Constitutional Court dismissed the complaint in October 2016. It found that the time to be  
taken into account ran from the adoption of the decision by the President of the Supreme Court in  
May 2015 to the serving of the Supreme Court’s decision on the appeal on points of law on the  
applicants in October 2015, which was just over five months. Their right to a hearing within a  
reasonable time had thus not been breached.  
Marić v. Croatia  
The applicant, Mirjana Marić, is a Croatian national who was born in 1951 and lives in Zagreb.  
In October 2007 Ms Marić began proceedings for compensation against the City of Zagreb after a  
traffic accident caused by an icy road which had not been salted. Zagreb Country Court handed  
down the final judgment in appeal proceedings in March 2017, awarding her compensation for  
pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage, which was served on her in May 2017.  
The applicant, relying on the 2005 Courts Act, lodged a request for the protection of the right to a  
hearing within a reasonable time in June 2010, which was ultimately dismissed by the Supreme  
Court in October 2011.  
She lodged a constitutional complaint about excessive length of proceedings in January 2014,  
arguing that the remedy provided by a new Act, the 2013 Courts Act, was not effective.  
The Constitutional Court dismissed her complaint for failure to use other remedies for excessive  
length of proceedings, notably those under the 2013 Courts Act. It could not assess her complaint in  
the abstract and doubts about the remedy’s effectiveness did not mean she did not have to try it  
first.  
Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court  
Relying on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial within a reasonable time) the applicants complained of  
the excessive length of the proceedings in their cases and, under Article 13 (right to an effective  
remedy), of the lack of effective domestic remedies for their complaints.  
The applications were lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 20 April 2017 and 19  
February 2015 respectively.  
Judgment in Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia was  
given by a Chamber of seven judges,  
composed as follows:  
Judgment in Marić v. Croatia was given by a  
Chamber of seven judges, composed as  
follows:  
Krzysztof Wojtyczek (Poland), President,  
Ksenija Turković (Croatia),  
Krzysztof Wojtyczek (Poland), President,  
Ksenija Turković (Croatia),  
Aleš Pejchal (the Czech Republic),  
Armen Harutyunyan (Armenia),  
Pere Pastor Vilanova (Andorra),  
Pauliine Koskelo (Finland),  
Aleš Pejchal (the Czech Republic),  
Pauliine Koskelo (Finland),  
Tim Eicke (the United Kingdom),  
Jovan Ilievski (North Macedonia),  
Raffaele Sabato (Italy),  
Tim Eicke (the United Kingdom),  
and also Abel Campos, Section Registrar.  
and also Abel Campos, Section Registrar  
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issued by the Registrar of the Court  
ECHR 229 (2020)  
30.07.2020  
Decision of the Court  
Article 6 § 1  
Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia  
The Court found that the proceedings overall had lasted 15 years and five months at three levels of  
jurisdiction. That was clearly excessive and could only be justified in exceptional circumstances,  
which were, however, not present. The Court found that the proceedings had failed to meet the  
“reasonable time” requirement and had violated Article 6 § 1.  
Marić v. Croatia  
Admissibility  
The Government argued that the applicant’s complaint was not admissible as she had not fully  
exhausted domestic remedies, in particular the procedure under the 2013 Courts Act. The applicant  
submitted that a Constitutional Court complaint had been the only effective remedy in her case.  
The Court first held that the period to be taken into account was just over four years, running from  
when the 2013 Courts Act had come into force to when the final judgment had been served on her.  
It observed that the 2013 Courts Act provided a two-step procedure for excessively long  
proceedings: first, it was possible to obtain a decision by the president of the court dealing with the  
case to accelerate the proceedings, which could provide a six-month deadline. Second, it was  
possible to obtain compensation for a violation of the right to a hearing within a reasonable time.  
In its decision in Novak v. Croatia it had found that the first step of the procedure, the purely  
acceleratory remedy, could not be considered effective as it could only prevent further violations of  
the right to a hearing within a reasonable time when such a violation had already occurred. On the  
other hand, it had held in Novak, that the secondary, compensatory, remedy could be effective.  
Nevertheless, the secondary remedy had restrictions: it could only be used where a complaint under  
the first, acceleratory remedy had been upheld and the judge hearing the case had failed to meet  
the deadline to deliver a judgment.  
The question was thus whether the applicants had anyway to make use of the first leg of the  
remedy: the Court found that they did not. The availability of the secondary remedy was restricted  
to such an extent that it dispensed applicants from first having to use the primary, purely  
acceleratory remedy.  
The Court considered it understandable that Ms Marić had not used the purely accelerator remedy  
as that would have gone beyond the duties incumbent on applicants under the Convention’s  
admissibility rules. On the other hand, anyone who had used the first step of the procedure had to  
use the second step too in order to exhaust domestic remedies for the purposes of admissibility if  
the judge hearing the case had failed to meet the deadline to deliver a judgment.  
Merits  
The Court found that the Government had not put forward any fact or argument which justified the  
length of the proceedings in the applicant’s case and there had been a breach of Article 6 § 1.  
Article 13  
Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia  
The applicants submitted that they had never received any compensation for their protracted  
proceedings, which had lasted more than 15 years. The Government argued that the remedies  
available to the applicants had been effective.  
The Court noted that in May 2015 the President of the Supreme Court had granted their request for  
a remedy to accelerate the proceedings in their case and had ordered that a judgment be delivered  
within six months. However, a judgment had already been delivered two days earlier.  
Given that the proceedings had by that time lasted 15 years, the remedy could only be considered  
effective if it had been accompanied by a compensatory step. However, compensation was not  
possible as the deadline for the accelerated judgment had not been exceeded. The purely  
acceleratory remedy under the 2013 Courts Act had therefore not been an effective remedy for the  
applicants’ complaint about the length of the proceedings.  
The Court went on to examine whether the complaint to the Constitutional Court was effective. It  
noted that in December 2014 the Constitutional Court had decided that complaints about the length  
of proceedings could be made to it, if the other remedies had been used first.  
The Court noted, however, that in the applicants’ case the Constitutional Court had not taken into  
account the overall length of the proceedings, more than 15 years, but had only considered the  
period of about five months between the President of the Supreme Court granting their request for  
an acceleratory remedy and the delivery of the final judgment in their civil case.  
It reiterated that a remedy to raise a complaint about length of proceedings could only be  
considered effective if it was capable of covering all stages of the proceedings and their overall  
length. It therefore found that a complaint under section 63 of the Constitutional Court Act was not  
an effective remedy for the applicants.  
The Court noted that the Constitutional Court’s decision in the applicants’ case had reflected a  
practice which had existed between December 2014 and May 2018, which had definitely changed in  
March 2019, when the Constitutional Court had begun to consistently take account of the overall  
duration of proceedings. Since the decisions suggesting the change in practice were published in  
April and May 2019, the Court considered that that new practice must have become public  
knowledge from November 2019.  
The Court concluded that between January 2015 and mid-May 2019 a constitutional complaint was  
not an effective remedy for complaints about the length of proceedings in cases where one of the  
other remedies had been granted. However, it was effective if such a remedy had been denied.  
The applicants had thus not had an effective remedy to complain about the excessive length of the  
proceedings in their case and there had been a violation of Article 13.  
Marić v. Croatia  
The Court noted its findings in Ms Marić’s case in relation to Article 6 § 1 and that it had dismissed  
the Government’s objections of non-exhaustion of domestic remedies as she had not had to use the  
remedy available under the 2013 Courts Acts.  
It concluded that there had also been a violation of Article 13 in her case.  
Article 41 (just satisfaction)  
The Court held that Croatia was to pay each of the applicants in Kirinčić and Others v. Croatia 9,000  
euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 22 jointly in respect of costs and expenses.  
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It held that Croatia was to pay the applicant in Marić v. Croatia EUR 1,250 in respect of  
non-pecuniary damage and EUR 2,500 in respect of costs and expenses.  
The judgment is available only in English.  
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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member  
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