18
GUZZARDI v. ITALY JUDGMENT
58. The Government objected to the Commission having on its own
initiative taken into consideration Article 5 (art. 5) – and Article 6 (art. 6) as from May 1976 (see paragraph 54 above). Their argument ran as follows.
In order to bring a case before the Commission, a "person, nongovernmental organisation or group of individuals" must claim to be the
victim "of a violation ... of the rights set forth in [the] Convention". By these
words, Article 25 (art. 25) identified both the persons empowered to lodge
an application and the object of the proceedings instituted before the
Commission and then, if appropriate, before the Court, namely a finding
that the breach alleged by the applicant did occur. However, Mr. Guzzardi
initially invoked only Articles 3, 8 and 9 (art. 3, art. 8, art. 9) of the
Convention and Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 (P1-2) (see paragraph 53
above). Whilst the characterisation in law to be given to a contested
measure was a matter for the trial judge, the Commission had overlooked
another general principle, that is to say the obligation to limit the decision to
facts adduced by the litigant. In order to find a violation of Article 5 (art. 5),
the Commission had relied on circumstances which Mr. Catalano had
mentioned neither in his first letter, dated 17 November 1975, nor in the
application form and explanatory memorandum of 30 January 1976, those
circumstances being the restriction to 2.5 sq. km. of the area reserved for
persons in compulsory residence, the almost permanent supervision, the
impossibility of making social contacts and the length of the compulsory
residence. In the Government’s submission, the Commission had thereby
erred outside its jurisdiction.
59. The Government had already formulated a similar argument before
the Commission. Their observations of 3 September 1976 (at pages 12, 13
and 18), filed subsequent to the official notification of the application (see
paragraph 54 above), set it out in embryo. It is no cause for surprise that the
Government did not develop the point until after the admissibility decision
of 1 March 1977 (see the memorial of 8 February 1978, the oral pleadings
made the following day and the memorial of 15 March 1978); for until then
it did not emerge very clearly that the Commission was going to review
under Article 5 (art. 5) - and Article 6 (art. 6) - not the compulsory residence
order in itself, as the Government seemed to believe, but the manner in
which the order was implemented at Cala Reale. Accordingly, no issue of
estoppel arises (see, mutatis mutandis, the Artico judgment of 13 May 1980,
Series A no. 37, pp. 13-14, 27).
60. Whilst the Commission’s report went no further than summarising
the Government’s argument (see paragraph 67, last sub-paragraph), the
Delegates did reply thereto in detail at the hearings held on 29 January
1980. The Court agrees for the main part with the Delegates’ opinion, for
the following reasons.
61. Article 25 (art. 25) requires that individual applicants should claim to
be the victim "of a violation of the rights set forth in the Convention"; it