The Four-Month Deadline Ends More Cases Than the Merits

Protocol No. 15 amended Article 35 § 1 of the Convention to reduce the time limit for lodging an application from six months to four. The shortened limit applies to applications where the final domestic decision was taken on or after 1 February 2022. Anything decided domestically before that date keeps the old six-month window.

By now, almost every live file falls on the four-month side. Treating six as the rule and four as a footnote — which is how most secondary material still frames it — has the failure mode backwards.

The limit runs from the final domestic decision, and "final" means the decision that exhausts the effective remedies actually available to you. Two common errors sit here. Applicants pursue a remedy that was never effective, believe the clock is paused while they do, and discover it was running throughout. Or they skip an effective remedy, and are rejected for non-exhaustion instead.

Both mistakes come from the same place: treating the domestic route as a checklist rather than an assessment. Which remedies count is a legal question that has to be answered before the clock is a problem, not after.

There is a genuine distinction for our cases. Where a judgment remains unenforced, the situation is a continuing one rather than a single act with lasting effects, and the time limit is applied differently — in principle it does not begin to run while the failure persists.

We do not plan around that. A continuing situation ends the moment the debt is settled or the domestic proceedings close, and the limit starts from there. Relying on the doctrine to justify delay converts a strong file into an argument about admissibility, which is not where a creditor wants to spend the Court’s attention.

• Date the file on intake

  The first thing recorded is the final domestic decision and its date. Not the debt, not the amount — the date. It determines whether anything else is worth analysing.

• Map remedies before pursuing them

  Each available domestic step is classified as effective or not before it is taken, because that classification is what moves the deadline.

• File early, supplement later

  The application interrupts the limit. Evidence and argument can be developed afterwards. A complete file lodged late is worth less than a sound one lodged in time.