Even compensation awarded by the European Court not forthcoming

The government is dragging its feet on compensation payments which the European Court of Human Rights has ordered it to pay. A number of people who won cases in Strasbourg have still not seen the money awarded them.

Kommersant Ukraine reports that the Justice Ministry was loath to comment on the problem.  Last week it denied that there was any debt, and only admitted it after the journalists cited specific examples.  It now admits that it is owing 14.2 million UAH.    The Ministry says that the penalty for late payment will be paid, but the 4% interest does not appear to be prompting anyone to take prompt action on payments. The record compensation awarded by the ECHR on 25 July – 27 million EUR – is likely to exacerbate the problem.

This situation is new.  Up till 2013 Ukraine consistently failed to comply with other parts of the judgments (changing legislation, etc) but had always paid up promptly.

In January 2013 several key judgments were passed against Ukraine involving large numbers of repetitive cases over the failure of national courts to enforce court rulings. Kyiv had three months to pay the amounts awarded (presumably after the three months given for possible appeals before the judgments come into force – translator).  It did not do so.

Mykhailo Serhiev from the Prometheus 2000 company which won a case on 17 January says that they have received the 3 thousand EUR moral compensation, but not the main amount of almost 500 thousand UAH  [one EUR is roughly 10.5 UAH).

The Justice Ministry has admitted to them that there are difficulties but promise that some of the money outstanding will be paid after receipt of supplementary finances in September.