THIRD SECTION
CASE OF ZAJMI v. ALBANIA
(Application no. 83907/17)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
20 June 2023
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Zajmi v. Albania,
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Georgios A. Serghides, President,
 Darian Pavli,
 Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir, judges,
and Olga Chernishova, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 83907/17) against the Republic of Albania lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 12 December 2017 by an Albanian national, Ms Çetina Zajmi, born in 1957 and living in Tirana (“the applicant”) who was represented by Mr O. Samarxhi, a lawyer practising in Tirana;
the decision to give notice of the application to the Albanian Government (“the Government”), represented by their former Agents, Ms A. Hiçka and Mr A. Metani and, subsequently, by Mr O. Moçka of the State Advocate’s Office;
the Government’s observations;
Having deliberated in private on 30 May 2023,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns the criminal proceedings against the applicant in which she was found guilty of aggravated fraud and sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment by the Tirana District Court on 13 March 2013. The applicant’s appeal was dismissed by the Tirana Appeal Court on 8 November 2013. The applicant then brought a further appeal with the Supreme Court which dismissed it on 25 May 2015. 2. On 8 November 2016 Law no. 99/2016 of 6 November 2016 was published in the Official Journal. It shortened the time-limit for lodging a constitutional complaint from two years to four months “of obtaining knowledge of the interference [with a constitutional right or freedom]” (konstatimi i cënimit). It also provided that the new time-limit should enter into force on 1 March 2017. 3. On 27 February 2017 the applicant sent a constitutional complaint through a post office. On the envelope she put the address as: “Gj – K.SH, Tirané”. 4. On an unspecified date the applicant checked with the post office whether her mail had been delivered to the Constitutional Court and learned that it had not because the recipient of her mail could not be identified since the name and address were incomplete. 5. The applicant re-sent her constitutional complaint at the proper address of the Constitutional Court on 22 May 2017. It was declared inadmissible as being lodged out of the four-month time-limit on 16 June 2017. 6. On 16 June 2017 the Constitutional Court adopted two other separate decisions in the cases of Pajova (decision no. 157) and Ibrahimi (decision no.152) in which it applied the newly introduced four-month time-limit in respect of the Supreme Court’s decisions adopted respectively on 7 May 2015 and 25 June 2015 and counting from the date of their adoption.

Article of the Convention at issue: Article 6
Outcome: violation