What Strasbourg Actually Pays

Whether the Convention was breached and what the applicant receives are decided separately. Article 41 lets the Court afford just satisfaction where domestic law allows only partial reparation. "Just" is doing real work in that sentence: the award is equitable, not arithmetic, and the Court says so openly.

For creditors this is the point where expectations most often need managing. A violation is not an order to pay the debt. It is a finding, plus a sum the Court considers equitable, plus an obligation on the State to put the applicant back where they should have been.

Where the unpaid judgment debt is quantified and the causal link is clean, the outstanding sum is the natural measure of pecuniary damage. The Court has repeatedly indicated that the most appropriate form of redress for non-enforcement is for the State to secure enforcement of the domestic judgment — the debt, not a substitute for it.

Two things erode it. Documentation that does not establish the sum with precision, and inflation over the years the debt went unpaid, which has to be claimed and evidenced rather than assumed.

• Awarded, and modest

  Distress and frustration from prolonged non-enforcement are compensated, but the sums are measured in thousands of euros, not as a percentage of the debt.

• Length is the main driver

  How long the judgment went unenforced weighs more heavily than the size of the sum owed.

• Companies can claim it

  A commercial applicant is not confined to pecuniary loss; uncertainty in planning and management, and reputational effect, have been recognised.

Costs are recoverable if actually incurred, necessarily incurred, and reasonable as to quantum. All three are tested, and itemised evidence is what carries them. Awards also carry default interest if the State does not pay within the period the judgment sets, which is normally three months from the date the judgment becomes final.

The realistic outcome in a well-documented non-enforcement case is the debt, a non-pecuniary award in the low thousands, and costs. The leverage is not only the sum. It is that execution of the judgment is then supervised on the record by the Committee of Ministers, which is a form of pressure no domestic enforcement system provides.