Chornobyl veterans will seek justice at the European Court

In early February a group of currently disabled former members of search and rescue teams that participated in liquidating the Chornobyl catastrophe, residing in Zhytomyr oblast, began preparing documents to apply to the European Court of Human Rights. The cause for their appeal is delays in rehabilitation payments and other compensation. The issue is that, in accordance with Article 48 of the law On the Status and Social Protection of the Victims of Chornobyl Catastrophe, these people were to obtain yearly rehabilitation compensations from 555 to 925 hryvnias, depending on their disability group, and one-time compensation in connection with loss of health from 5550 to 11,100 hryvnias. (These payments are accounted based on the minimum wage, meaning that they should be even bigger starting from this year). In reality, they are paid yearly compensation amounting from 21.50 hryvnias to 26.70 hryvnias and one-time compensation from 189.60 to 379.30 hryvnias. Even these are delayed. Consider also that often they have no chance to exercise their right to free treatment and medicines. In addition, in recent years their chances to buy health tours free of charge or at discount also became lower. Why is this happening? Because the social protection bodies through which the said payments are made calculate and pay them according to the regulations on the minimum wage, issued by the parliament annually, along with the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers No. 836 of July 26, 1996, establishing these rather modest sums. Without going into juridical subtleties, it is worth noting that, proceeding from the spirit and letter of the legislation on the minimum wage, the government should adopt a new regulation on such compensation annually as well, the more so that every year, especially in the most recent period, the tax part of the state budget, from which these compensations are paid, is growing (incidentally, this applies not only to Chornobyl but also other kinds of social payments).

Thus, the most persistent former members of search and rescue teams residing in Zhytomyr oblast decided to appeal against the officials’ actions in court. Head of the Zhytomyr city branch of the International Society for Human Rights Andriy Melnychuk has offered them his support.

Physically handicapped first category Chornobyl veteran Mykola Stanishevsky, who worked in the zone of the Chornobyl Fourth Block as part of the sappers regiment in mid-May of 1986, was quite frank in speaking with The Day about this situation: “Nobody is going to pay us this compensation correctly. I believe the law is on our side, and I am going to defend my rights. I will even go to the European Court if I need to.” At the court of original jurisdiction he was refused in his major demands. Moreover, the judge who considered his appeal had previously made a decision in a Chornobyl veteran’s favor in a similar case. She later explained her decision to The Day by the fact that the Zhytomyr Oblast Appeal Court started to overrule such decisions.

At this writing, 45 persons have received positive court decisions on their appeals and writs of execution to levy the sums they are due from social protection institutions. However, the courts turn down most of the appeals. The courts that supported the veterans appeal to the Constitutional Court’s decisions on certain laws, in part, On the State Budget of Ukraine in 2001, and also to the fact that the mentioned Cabinet of Ministers’ decision does not overrule the law and cannot amend it. In addition, the lack of necessary funds cannot provide grounds for rejecting the veterans’ appeals. However, even those who won their cases have not received their aid and compensation thus far. In one of its official answers to some of them, the oblast Justice Administration argues that it is unclear to the representatives of the state executive service from what accounts of the respective social protection institutions they are supposed to levy money for full-fledged aid and compensation. Now the veterans are prepared to also sue the executive service.

Mr. Melnychuk, a lawyer by training, has this to say about the situation: “We believe that in this case people are limited in their right to protect their interests in court. Veterans also turn to us regarding incorrect accounting of their pensions or delays in paying them compensation for their lost dwellings in contaminated areas. Talking about lawsuits regarding the mentioned Chornobyl compensation, we are going to use all the legal mechanisms that exist in our country to solve this issue in favor of the Chornobyl veterans. If we fail to do this on the national level, we will have to turn to international bodies. I would estimate the chances for the veterans to win their case in the European Court as about 90%.”

In his turn, Zhytomyr Oblast State Administration Deputy Head of the Central Labor and Social Protection Administration Vasyl Pavliuk assured The Day that this body and its branches would side with Chornobyl veterans, since their duty is to protect citizens’ rights. However, in his view, the aid and compensation are accounted in the way described, because in case of a calculation error, the employee who made this error will have to cover the over-expenditure. In the official’s opinion, judges who previously pronounced judgment in favor of the veterans later have better understood the essence of the problem.

In general, it seems that we are dealing with a typical situation, when delays in paying out, according to the law, rather considerable sums in social payments in the form of various aid and compensation are suspended with reference to the lack of budget funds (the issue of how justified these laws were in terms of economy on the moment of their passing rates a separate discussion). This refers not only Chornobyl veterans but also other, very vulnerable, categories of Ukrainians. As we see, there are people (and not only in Zhytomyr oblast, according to this author’s information), who are able to prove the judicial vulnerability of this situation. It could become more acute, especially in connection with the planned reform of social payments designed to establish targeted aid. Today Ukraine is a leader in terms of the number of its citizens’ appeals to the European Court of Human Rights. Today Zhytomyr-based Chornobyl veterans are preparing to send their appeals there. However, if the authorities have decided that making Ukrainian citizens beat down the courts’ doors, including the international ones, is better that paying them rather considerable sums (judging by some of the documents, one could come to such a conclusion), a question could arise as to whether they have calculated the social and political consequences of such an approach. It looks like this is true not only for the old laws: the situation concerning pension legislation also speaks volumes in these terms.