CEDH · CASELAW;CLIN;ENG — 23 mars 2010

.s3ABFC313 { font-size:10pt } .sEB86A30B { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:14pt; page-break-after:avoid } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .sA241FE93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:18pt; text-align:justify; page-break-after:avoid; border-bottom:0.75pt solid #000000; padding-bottom:1pt } .s2EF62ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:12pt } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s8F2B0B1B { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:12pt } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s5F48796F { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify } .s5CB9E8AB { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify; border-bottom:1pt solid #000000; padding-bottom:1pt } .sDF790F1E { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s3DC36BA9 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 128 March 2010 Döşemealtı Belediyesi v. Turkey (dec.) - 50108/06 Decision 23.3.2010 [Section II] Article 34 Locus standi Application lodged by a municipality, a public organisation: inadmissible   Facts – The case concerned a dispute between the applicant municipality and the Ministry of Regional Development. The Ministry had decided to attach five villages and an industrial estate to its administrative area. However, following an administrative appeal by two municipalities, the Ministry attached the villages and industrial estate to a different municipality. The applicant municipality lodged an application to have the decision set aside and the case is apparently still pending before an administrative court. Law – Article 34: The municipality had exercised its powers as a public body in bringing the action in question because it was precisely because it was a “municipality” that it had the status of applicant in the proceedings under domestic law. Moreover, the three stakeholders in the proceedings in the present case (the applicant municipality, the Ministry of the Interior and the judicial authorities conducting the domestic proceedings) each represented public authority and therefore the respondent State. When it had previously examined whether governmental organisations had locus standi before it, the Court had always looked at their competence to exercise public functions, without having regard to the act or procedure complained of. In the present case, according to the constitutional and legislative definitions in Turkish law, a municipality was a public-law legal entity whose purpose was to meet the collective needs of the local residents and whose decision-making body was made up of members elected by direct suffrage. Its budget consisted mainly of appropriations from the State’s budget and other public revenue such as taxes and fines. It exercised public functions such as expropriation, the publication of by-laws and the maintaining of law and order. The Court found no reason to depart from its well-established case-law to the effect that local authorities lacked locus standi to lodge an application under Article   34. In addition, in the present case, the dispute in the domestic proceedings concerned only the administrative attachment of certain villages to a particular municipality and was therefore a dispute of a strictly “public nature”; accordingly, it could hardly be said to concern “civil rights and obligations” within the meaning of Article 6 §   1. Conclusion : inadmissible (incompatible ratione personae ).   © Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court. Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes