Page 53 - MONACO LAW REVIEW 2025-2

MONACO LAW REVIEW | DECEMBER 2025 |FROM THE EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE
fall within the scope of Article 6 § 1 only where the conditions
for the applicability of its civil limb are met.
The relevant criterion is whether the outcome of the
constitutional proceedings is decisive for the determination of
the applicant’s civil rights and obligations.
In the present case, the company claimed to be acting in the
general interest, arguing that the consideration granted to the
Monegasque State was insuffi cient, which, in the Court’s view,
“cannot be equated with the protection of the civil rights held by
SCI Esperanza”. The company also alleged a risk of breach of
the principle of equality before the law owing to the absence
of competitive tendering for the award of the project, which
would, in principle, concern its own proprietary interests.
However, the declassifi cation measure sought only to transfer
the land from the public domain of the State into its private
domain and not to transfer it to another private person.
That would be a separate step, requiring a distinct statute
or a decision of the State adopted in accordance with the
law pursuant to Article 35 of the Constitution. Accordingly,
the contested legislation had the sole purpose of removing
a parcel of land from the public domain and placing it
within the State’s private domain, and was therefore purely
normative: it authorised neither the transfer of the land nor
the commencement of the real-estate project. As there was no
connection with a dispute concerning the company’s property
rights or economic interests, the outcome of the constitutional
proceedings was not directly decisive for its civil rights. It
follows that the company could, if necessary, challenge any
subsequent transfer or building authorisation if it infringed
its rights; but at this stage of the proceedings, the complaints
relating to the alleged lack of fairness could not be examined
for lack of applicability of Article 6.
SIGNIFICANCE:
The Court reiterates that Article 6 § 1 does not apply to purely
normative constitutional proceedings and, in doing so, draws
a distinction between the challenge of an abstract statute (such
as the declassifi cation of public property) and a dispute directly
concerning a civil right (such as property or compensation).
The case demonstrates that individuals cannot rely on the
Convention to contest, in the name of the general interest,
legislation of a general and impersonal nature. The applicability
of Article 6 is confi ned to constitutional proceedings that have
a direct and decisive impact on the applicants’ civil rights.
BACKGROUND:
The applicant’s husband died following a traffi c accident that
occurred in Monaco in 2016. She sought compensation for the
damage suffered from the insurer of the driver responsible
for the accident. However, the insurance contract had been
declared null and void on the ground of misrepresentation.
The applicant argued that, as a third-party victim, the
nullity should not be enforceable against the victim, in line
with French and European approaches to the matter. The
Monegasque courts held, however, that the nullity of the
policy was enforceable against the victim.
ANALYSIS:
The Strasbourg Court found that the applicant had been able
to exercise her rights fully before the Monegasque courts
and therefore concluded that the domestic judges had not
infringed her right to a fair hearing under Article 6 § 1. On
the merits, the Court considered that the domestic courts had
rightly recalled that Monaco is not a member of the European
Union and is therefore bound neither by EU directives nor by
the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union or
the French Court of Cassation. At the time of the accident, the
relevant legislative and regulatory provisions of Monegasque
insurance law did not include the rule of unenforceability:
that rule was introduced later into the French Insurance Code,
in 2019, and was thus not applicable to the events of 2016.
Reference was also made to the Convention of 18 May 1963 on
the regulation of insurance and the Exchange of Letters of the
same date relating to it.
SIGNIFICANCE:
The judgment fi rst confi rms the principle of the Principality’s
legal sovereignty: Monegasque judges are never required to
transpose European or French case-law in the absence of a
domestic legislative provision to that effect. The Court also
emphasised the importance of the principle of subsidiarity:
it does not substitute its own interpretation of domestic law
for that of national courts, save in cases of arbitrariness or
manifest breach of a right guaranteed by the Convention. In this
case, judicial protection owed to the applicant was respected,
notwithstanding the fact that the substantive outcome diverged
from both French law and European Union law at the time.
YS
YS
Enforceability of the Nullity of an
Insurance Contract against the Victim
and Absence of a Violation of the
Right to a Fair Hearing
ECtHR (Fifth Section), 22 May 2025,
Ms Irina Maltceva v. Monaco, No. 48017/22
Judicial Secondment:
Renewal Is Not a Right
ECtHR, 09 July 2024,
Levrault v. Monaco, No. 47070/20
BACKGROUND:
Both France and Monaco had issued favourable opinions for the
renewal of the secondment of an investigating judge assigned
51