Published on 22 April 2025
 
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 33355/23
SHARBIV LTD
against Serbia
lodged on 18 August 2023
communicated on 2 April 2025
 
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The applicant is a private company based in Israel. In 2002 the District Court in Haifa, Israel, accepted the applicant company’s pecuniary claim against a then socially-owned company from Serbia and upon the latter’s appeal, in 2004 the judgment became final. The domestic courts rejected the applicant company’s request for recognition of that foreign judgment on the grounds that the applicant company had failed to provide direct evidence that its counterclaim from 1993 had been personally delivered to the Serbian company or that the latter had participated in any way in the court proceedings in Israel, relying on Article 88 of the Law on Resolving Conflict of Laws with Regulations of Other Countries.
 
Invoking Article 6 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, the applicant company claims that the domestic courts’ decision to refuse recognition of final foreign decision was arbitrary, that the courts failed to respond to its main arguments and reached manifestly erroneous conclusions, which violated its right to the peaceful enjoyment of its possessions. Moreover, the applicant company complains about the length of the judicial proceedings (around 11 years at two levels of jurisdiction).
 
 
 
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1.  Did the applicant company have a fair hearing in the determination of its civil rights and obligations, in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
 
2.  Did the domestic courts provide sufficient reasons for their decision to refuse the recognition of the final foreign decision, as required under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see, NDI SOPOT v. North Macedonia, no. 6035/17, 26 November 2024, § 115)?
 
3.  Has the applicant company exhausted all effective domestic remedies, as required by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention concerning its complaint about the length of judicial proceedings?
 
4.  If so, was the length of the judicial proceedings in the present case in breach of the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
 
5.  Has there been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1? In particular, does the failure of the respondent State to recognise the foreign decision at issue amount to a violation of the applicant company’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of its possessions? (see, mutatis mutandis, BTS Holding, a.s. v. Slovakia, no. 55617/17, 30 June 2022, § 71)?