36 NEUMEISTER v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT October 1962 in any event, no longer so great that it was necessary to dismiss as quite ineffective the taking of the guarantees which, under Article 5 (3) (art. 5-3) may condition a grant of provisional release in order to reduce the risks which it entails. However, this was precisely the attitude of the Austrian judicial authorities when for the first time, on 26 October 1962, Neumeister proposed a bank guarantee of 200,000 or, if necessary, 250,000 schillings (statement of the facts, para. 14), again when this offer was repeated on 12 July 1963 (statement of the facts, para. 16) and even when the offer of bail was increased by his lawyer on 6 November 1963 to one million schillings (statement of the facts, para. 18). 13. The Court is not in a position to state an opinion as to the amount of security which could reasonably be demanded of Neumeister, and it does not reject the notion that the first offers could have been dismissed as insufficient. It notes however that the Austrian courts based their calculations mainly on the amount of loss resulting from the offences imputed to Neumeister which he might be called upon to make good. The loss was such that, according to the decisions given, the offer of a bank guarantee could not be considered ("indiskutabel", statement of the facts, paras. 14 and 16). This refusal by the judicial authorities to take any account whatsoever of the successive offers of bail made by Neumeister became less and less justified the nearer the offers came to the sum which could reasonably be considered sufficient to ensure his appearance at the trial. 14. When the principle of release conditioned by guarantees seemed acceptable, it was still exclusively in relation to the amount of loss that the amount of security required was fixed successively at 2,000,000, 1,750,000 and 1,250,000 schillings, finally to be reduced on 3 June 1964 to the sum of one million schillings which Neumeister was able to provide only on 16 September. This concern to fix the amount of the guarantee to be furnished by a detained person solely in relation to the amount of the loss imputed to him does not seem to be in conformity with Article 5 (3) (art. 5-3) of the Convention. The guarantee provided for by that Article (art. 5-3) is designed to ensure not the reparation of loss but rather the presence of the accused at the hearing. Its amount must therefore be assessed principally by reference to him, his assets and his relationship with the persons who are to provide the security, in other words to the degree of confidence that is possible that the prospect of loss of the security or of action against the guarantors in case of his non-appearance at the trial will act as a sufficient deterrent to dispel any wish on his part to abscond. 15. For these reasons, the Court finds that Neumeister’s continued provisional detention until 16 September 1964 constituted a violation of Article 5 (3) (art. 5-3) of the Convention.