KLASS AND OTHERS v. GERMANY JUGDMENT
12
subject to surveillance, were seeking a general and abstract review of the
contested legislation in the light of the Convention.
31. According to the reply given by the Delegates at the hearing, the
Commission agreed with the Government that the Court is competent to
determine whether the applicants can claim to be "victims" within the
meaning of Article 25 para. 1 (art. 25-1). However, the Commission
disagreed with the Government in so far as the latter’s proposal might imply
the suggestion that the Commission’s decision on the admissibility of the
application should as such be reviewed by the Court.
The Delegates considered that the Government were requiring too rigid a
standard for the notion of a "victim" of an alleged breach of Article 8 (art. 8)
of the Convention. They submitted that, in order to be able to claim to be
the victim of an interference with the exercise of the right conferred on him
by Article 8 para. 1 (art. 8-1), it should suffice that a person is in a situation
where there is a reasonable risk of his being subjected to secret surveillance.
In the Delegates’ view, the applicants are not only to be considered as
constructive victims, as the Commission had in effect stated: they can claim
to be direct victims of a violation of their rights under Article 8 (art. 8) in
that under the terms of the contested legislation everyone in the Federal
Republic of Germany who could be presumed to have contact with people
involved in subversive activity really runs the risk of being subject to secret
surveillance, the sole existence of this risk being in itself a restriction on
free communication.
The Principal Delegate, for another reason, regarded the application as
rightly declared admissible. In his view, the alleged violation related to a
single right which, although not expressly enounced in the Convention, was
to be derived by necessary implication; this implied right was the right of
every individual to be informed within a reasonable time of any secret
measure taken in his respect by the public authorities and amounting to an
interference with his rights and freedoms under the Convention.
32. The Court confirms the well-established principle of its own case-law
that, once a case is duly referred to it, the Court is endowed with full
jurisdiction and may take cognisance of all questions of fact or of law
arising in the course of the proceedings, including questions which may
have been raised before the Commission under the head of admissibility.
This conclusion is in no way invalidated by the powers conferred on the
Commission under Article 27 (art. 27) of the Convention as regards the
admissibility of applications. The task which this Article assigns to the
Commission is one of sifting; the Commission either does or does not
accept the applications. Its decision to reject applications which it considers
to be inadmissible are without appeal as are, moreover, also those by which
applications are accepted; they are taken in complete independence (see the
De Wilde, Ooms and Versyp judgment of 18 June 1971, Series A no. 12,
pp. 29 and 30, paras. 47-54; see also the judgment of 9 February 1967 on