From the Cour de révision to Strasbourg

What a Monegasque case must look like by the time the Cour de révision has ruled, if it is to survive in Strasbourg.

Monaco acceded to the Council of Europe on 5 October 2004 and ratified the Convention on 30 November 2005, the day it entered into force for the Principality. Individual applications under Article 34 lie for facts occurring on or after that date. Monaco is not a member of the European Union, so no preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union is available from a Monegasque court: Strasbourg is the supranational forum.

What Monaco has accepted, and what it has not

Protocol No. 1, signed on 5 October 2004, was never ratified, and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 is accordingly unavailable: Michaux v. Monaco (dec.), nos. 36965/22 and 20769/23, 18 January 2024, held such a complaint inadmissible ratione personae for want of ratification by the Principality. Protocol No. 12 is likewise unratified, so discrimination must run through Article 14 taken with a substantive article.

Protocols Nos. 15 and 16 are ratified, the latter, on advisory opinions, in force for Monaco since 1 February 2025. What Monaco has accepted shapes what can be argued: a seizure or confiscation grievance cannot be framed as a property complaint, and must be built instead on Articles 6, 7 and 8 — in the domestic file.

The domestic ladder and exhaustion

In criminal matters the juge d’instruction orders investigative measures, searches and seizures included; the chambre du conseil of the Cour d’appel rules on appeals against those orders and on detention. The ordinary ladder runs from the Tribunal de première instance to the Cour d’appel and to the Cour de révision, which sits in cassation and in certain configurations rules on the merits; constitutional and administrative matters lie with the Tribunal Suprême. Which of the two is the effective remedy depends on the act complained of.

Exhaustion under Article 35 § 1 is not satisfied merely by climbing that ladder. The applicant must have used the remedy capable of redressing the grievance, and must have raised the Convention complaint before the domestic courts at least in substance. Good cases die here. A file pleaded solely as domestic procedural irregularity, without the Convention right beneath it, reaches Strasbourg with the substance never argued; nothing can be added once the Cour de révision has ruled. The point can be met — in Prencipe v. Monaco, no. 43376/06, 16 July 2009, the Court dismissed objections of non-exhaustion and of the six-month rule before finding a violation of Article 5 § 3 — but it is met on the domestic record as it stands.

Under Protocol No. 15 the application must then be lodged within four months of the final domestic decision — the decision exhausting the remedy capable of redressing the grievance. Identifying it correctly matters as much as the calendar.

Navone and Others v. Monaco, nos. 62880/11, 62892/11 and 62899/11, 24 October 2013, on access to a lawyer in police custody, and Scavetta v. Monaco, no. 33301/13, 30 May 2017, on adversarial procedure, each produced a violation of Article 6 — procedural grievances capable of formulation during the domestic proceedings.

The Convention Preservation Review

A Convention Preservation Review is carried out before the final domestic decision, not after it. The European dimension of the file is identified, formulated and preserved on the record: which articles are genuinely engaged, at what stage each must be raised to count as raised in substance, which decision starts the four-month period. Monegasque counsel remain in charge throughout.

The Convention dimension of a Monegasque case is better identified before the final domestic decision than reconstructed afterwards. Just Rights Europe works on that dimension alone, alongside the avocat-défenseur conducting the proceedings in Monaco.