Human Rights Legal Update

The European Court of Human Rights (the "ECtHR") has decided the following Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 ("A1-P1") cases during the month of February 2019:

Ionescu v. Romania (Application no. 19788/03 et al.) – the ECtHR declared a breach of A1-P1 in a case where the owners of an expropriated property could not retrieve possession of that property due to the resale of said property by the Romanian state to third parties.

Alikhanyan v. Armenia (Application no. 6818/10) – the ECtHR declared a breach of A1-P1 in a case where the Armenian state earmarked and expropriated agricultural land for the mining of copper-molybdenum deposits without offering an adequate amount of compensation to the applicant. The court condemned the domestic courts' failure to consider the fact that the agricultural land provided the applicant with his only source of income.

Aleksić v. Slovenia (Application no. 57123/10) – the ECtHR declared a breach of A1-P1 in a case where an ex-citizen of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and ex-member of the Yugoslav People's Army was refused a military pension on the grounds of discriminatory nationality criteria.

Çataltepe c. Turquie (Application no . 51292/07) – the ECtHR declared a breach of A1-P1 in a case where the applicant, who was an owner pro indiviso of a plot of land in Ankara, Turkey, instituted proceedings for the dissolution of community property (action en dissolution de l'indivision). One of the co-owners of said property was declared absent and was henceforth represented by the public Treasury of the Turkish state. The Treasury instituted actions against the applicant to impugn his capacity as successor in title of the previous owners in the land registry of Ankara. Proceedings resulting from those actions, and which came before the Turkish Court of Cassation, were found to be seriously lacking both in motivation and reasoning.

Cassar Torreggiani et v. Malta [1] – four cases brought against the Maltese government for breach of A1-P1, in which the applicants claimed that the amounts awarded by the Maltese courts for the breach of Article 1 Protocol of the Convention in relation to their property was too low. The applicants and the Government reached a friendly settlement and the cases were stuck off the list. Dr Michael Camilleri from Mamo TCV Advocates formed part of the applicants' legal team.

1 Cassar Torreggiani v. Malta (Application No. 61981/16); Borg v. Malta (Application No. 75199/18); Azzopardi Vella v. Malta (Application No. 8423/17); Portelli v. Malta (Application No. 28404/17)