From January to June this year, Montenegro paid the applicants a total of 43.679,41 euros in damages and costs of proceedings, in accordance with the judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, within the stipulated deadlines.
Of that amount, the applicant was awarded 1.502,50 euros based on one judgment and 42.176,91 euros based on 10 decisions (of which 38.526,91 due to the excessive length of the proceedings before the Constitutional Court, and 3.650 euros due to insufficient reasoning by the Higher Court in Podgorica).
This is stated in the Report on the work of the Office of the Representative of Montenegro before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for the period January - June 2025, which was recently adopted by the Government.
6 cases concern alleged violation of the right to a fair trial due to lack of access to court and alleged violation of the right to an effective remedy in this regard
The Office of the Representative has been headed by the Representative since February 2, 2024. Katarina Peković.
The report was recently adopted by the Government.
The document states that the amounts paid based on judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights issued and published against Montenegro for 2024 amounted to 6.400.264 euros, for 2023 - 18.688, 2022 - 445.198 euros and 2021 - 17.980 euros.
It states that during the reporting period the European Court of Human Rights issued one judgment against Montenegro, finding a violation of Article 6, paragraph 1, of the Convention (right to a fair trial) due to the excessive length of proceedings before the Constitutional Court of Montenegro. In the same period, the European Court issued 11 decisions against Montenegro, involving a total of 43 individuals:
"Of which, in 10 decisions, it struck the applications out of the list of cases because the applicants and the State of Montenegro, as parties to the dispute, either reached friendly settlements based on respect for human rights guaranteed by the Convention and the protocols thereto, or the State of Montenegro submitted a unilateral declaration to the European Court of Human Rights acknowledging the violation of a human right and/or freedom guaranteed by the Convention, while in one decision it dismissed the application as inadmissible due to failure to comply with the four-month deadline for submitting the application," the document states.
The European Court of Human Rights, in the reporting period, communicated to the Office of the Ombudsman a total of 30 cases against Montenegro, involving 23 natural persons and six legal entities.
As of June 30, 2025, as stated in the document, the Office of the Representative has a total of 48 cases in its work, involving a total of 33 individuals and eight legal entities.
It is stated that around 63 percent of the communicated complaints related to the alleged violation of the right to a fair trial due to the length of proceedings before the Constitutional Court of Montenegro (19 cases).
The remaining 11 cases concerned, inter alia, an alleged violation of the right to a fair trial due to the failure to enforce the decision of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro rendered in the applicant's favour, an alleged violation of the right to a fair trial due to the alleged unfairness of the procedure for the election of three judges of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro and, in this regard, an alleged violation of the right to an effective remedy, as the Constitutional Court of Montenegro dismissed the applicant's constitutional appeal due to the failure to exhaust effective remedies.
The three cases concern both an alleged violation of the right to freedom of expression due to the imposition of a fine on the applicant in criminal proceedings during which he attempted to intervene procedurally and lodge an objection, and an alleged violation of the right to a fair trial due to the alleged bias of the courts that fined him and the insufficient reasoning of their decisions thereon.
Six cases concern alleged violations of the right to a fair trial due to the inability to access a court and the alleged violation of the right to an effective remedy in this regard.
In addition to the above cases that were communicated to the Office of the Representative in the reporting period, there are 18 more active cases in the work of the Office of the Representative.
Of these, the document states, seven cases relate to alleged violations of the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression due to the refusal of the competent state authorities to provide the applicant with the requested information, based on decisions that were allegedly not reasoned and not made in accordance with the law, and eight cases relate to alleged violations of the right to a fair trial due to the excessive length of proceedings before the Constitutional Court of Montenegro.
One case each concerns an alleged violation of the right to liberty and security due to the applicant's deprivation of liberty and detention, an alleged violation of the right to a fair trial due to the repetition of reasoning in the decisions of the Court of Appeal of Montenegro on the fulfilment of the conditions for initiating bankruptcy proceedings, which reasoning was contrary to the findings of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro on the matter, and an alleged violation of the procedural aspect of Article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the Convention due to the lack of an effective investigation into the applicant's ill-treatment by police officers.
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