he bailiff and officials of the Town Council inspected two municipal flats and considered them eligible to be offered to the applicants. The latter however refused both flats.
11. By letter of 28 August 2003 the bailiff informed the applicants that the Town Council had allocated funds for purchasing a flat for them.
12. In November 2003 the Council offered to the applicants to buy a flat or, in the alternative, to pay compensation.
13. In March 2004 the Council made two new offers. On 24 June 2004 the applicants accepted resettlement into one of those flats. On 27 August 2004 they obtained an occupancy voucher and the enforcement proceedings were terminated.
14. On 6 September 2004 the applicants received keys to the flat. On the same day the flat was inspected by the housing committee and the applicants signed the inspection record.
15. Thereafter, the applicants complained to various authorities that the judgment of 21 October 1999 had not been properly enforced because repair works were still required. Those were carried out in August 2005.
16. On an unspecified date the applicants brought a court action against the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice for the loss of profit and compensation for non-pecuniary damage incurred through the belated enforcement of the judgment of 21 October 1999. By a judgment of 23 August 2005 the Taganskiy District Court of Moscow dismissed their action. It found, in particular, that the flats offered to the applicants in September and October 2001 had met the requirements of the housing legislation. Therefore, their refusal to accept those offers had been ungrounded and the delays in the enforcement occurred afterwards could not be imputed to the bailiffs' service. On 18 July 2006 the Moscow City Court upheld the said judgment on appeal.
THE LAW
I. Alleged violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention
on account of the excessive length of the Court proceedings
17. The applicants complained that the length of the court proceedings against the Town Council had been incompatible with the "reasonable time" requirement, laid down in Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
"In the determination of his civil rights and obligations..., everyone is entitled to a... hearing within a reasonable time by [a]... tribunal..."
18. The Government contested that argument.
19. Pursuant to Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, the Court may only deal with a matter "within a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken". The purpose of the six-month rule is to promote security of law and to ensure that cases raising issues under the Convention are dealt with within a reasonable time. It also ought to protect the authorities and other persons concerned from being under any uncertainty for a prolonged period of time. Even if a respondent Government does not raise the issue of compliance with the rule, the Court is to do so of its own motion (see {Blecic} v. Croatia [GC], No. 59532/00, § 68, ECHR 2006-III).
20. Turning to the facts of the present case, the Court observes that the court proceedings ended on 17 January 2000 when the judgment of 21 October 1999, as amended by the appeal court, became final. The application by the first and second applicants was submitted on 5 June 2004 and by the third applicant on 13 February 2006, that is more than four and six years respectively after the civil dispute had been solved. The Court considers that the enforcement period does not fall within the period to be taken into account in respect of the applicants' complaint of the lengthy court proceedings because they have made a separate complaint about the non-enforcement proper (see Veretennikov v. Russia, No. 8363/03, § 31, 12 March 2009 and Finkov v. Russia, No. 27440/03, § 94, 8 October 2009)
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