The ECHR starts introducing common European standards for the compensation of moral damages, Ganea v Moldova, 2474/06

ECHR starts to re-consider the proportionality of the domestic compensation for moral damages. Mr Mihai Ganea was illegally arrested for 3 days. The Soroca Tribunal awarded him € 946 of compensation, however the Bălţi Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Justice reduced the compensation to € 63. It is remarkable that Moldova is one of the poorest European States with a GDP per capita of 3 261.42 international dollars (for comparison: 16 840.80 in Russia, 34 858.09 in France).

In § 30 of the judgment, the ECHR de facto stated that its standards for compensations must be applicable in all Council of Europe States. It declared € 63 “obvious and unreasonable disproportion”, and increased the sum to € 6 000 (§ 35). This is quite interesting, since the ECHR compensation policy has always been considered as chaotic. The 7-judges chamber also introduced two quite unpredictable criteria for proportionality of a compensation (§ 22):

1) the compensation must be fair;
2) the compensation must allow to delete the consequences of a violation.

Congratulations to Mr. Ganea.