DELCOURT v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT 16 Article 39 of the Decree of 15th March 1815 and then in Article 1109 of the 1967 Judicial Code - as it operates in practice - appears never to have been put in question by the legal profession or public opinion in Belgium. This wide measure of agreement would be impossible to explain if the independence and impartiality of the men on whose shoulders fell the administration of this institution at the Court of Cassation were doubted in Belgium, if the worth of their contribution to the body of decisions of the highest court were disputed or if their participation at the deliberations of the judges had been thought in any single case to open the door to unfairness or abuse. 37. The Court therefore arrives at the conclusion that the system provided for in Article 39 of the Decree of 15th March 1815 as applied in practice was not incompatible with Article 6 para. 1 (art. 6-1) of the Convention. 38. So far as concerns the application of that system in the present case, the Court finds that there are no grounds for holding that the Procureur général’s department at the Court of Cassation failed to observe, to the detriment of Delcourt, at the hearing or at the deliberations, the duty to be impartial and independent which is inherent in its functions. III. AS TO THE "NEW COMPLAINTS" OF THE APPLICANT 39. The Applicant does not confine himself to attacking the participation of an avocat général at the deliberations of the Court of Cassation; he further complains that he had no opportunity to reply to the final submissions of the Procureur général’s representative because they were not communicated to him before the hearing of 21st June 1965 at which, moreover, he did not have the right to say the last word. 40. The Belgian Government contests the admissibility of these "new complaints" stressing that Delcourt failed to raise them before the examination of the merits of the case by the Commission. This objection must be set aside. While these grounds were doubtless not mentioned explicitly in the Application or the first memorials of the Applicant, they had an evident connection with those contained therein. From the very beginning, Delcourt claimed that the presence of a member of the Procureur général’s department at the deliberations of 21st June 1965 had violated Article 6 para. 1 (art. 6-1) of the Convention. His "new complaints", which were formulated later, concerned the submissions of that same member immediately prior to his participation in the deliberations. These complaints thus also related to the role of the Procureur général’s department attached to the Court of Cassation and are intimately linked with the matters which formed the subject of Delcourt’s original complaint accepted by the Commission in its decision of 6th April 1967; indeed, they were adduced by him essentially in support of that complaint. Moreover, the