Hírek Strasbourgból

Március 1-én két érdekes döntés is született Strasbourgban. A Demopoulos et al ügyben az ECtHR nagytanácsa megállapította:

98. The Court is therefore not persuaded that the acknowledgement of the existence of a domestic remedy runs counter to the interests of those claiming to be victims of violations. It acknowledges the strength of feeling expressed by some of the applicants. However, the argument that it would be galling to have recourse to authorities in northern Cyprus cannot be given decisive weight - against the background of conflict and hostility, similar argument might be raised in respect of any official body or authority on the Turkish mainland, or indeed by any victim of a violation who is faced with the prospect of asking for redress from a State which has been responsible for the injury suffered. The fact that applicants live outside the occupied area furnishes no reason in principle why they should not be expected to apply to a “TRNC” body where it can be demonstrated that a remedy is both practicable and normally functioning (e.g. Cyprus v. Turkey, nos. 6780/74 and 6950/75, Commission decision of 26 May 1975, D.R. 2, p. 125, at pp. 137-138, § 14; Cyprus v. Turkey, no. 8007/77, Commission decision of 10 July 1978, D.R. 13, p. 85, at p. 152, § 34). Borders, factual or legal, are not an obstacle per se to the exhaustion of domestic remedies; as a general rule applicants living outside the jurisdiction of a Contracting State are not exempted from exhausting domestic remedies within that State, practical inconveniences or understandable personal reluctance notwithstanding.

A bíróság IV. Számú tanácsa az Adamkiewicz v. Poland ügyben (egyelőre csak franciául) pedig a bírók összeférhetetlenségével (§ 6. (1) kapcsolatos eddigi gyakorlatot foglalta össze (Hauschildt, Morel, Poppe etc.)

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A romániai kárpótlási törvényekkel kapcsolatban több száz kérelem futott be Strasbourgba: a lengyel példához hasonlóan bíróság ún. pilot judgment keretében fog foglalkozni:

Over a period of almost fifteen years the European Court of Human Rights has dealt with large numbers of cases concerning the mechanism for the restitution of properties nationalised or confiscated by the communist State in Romania. More than 1,000 cases of this kind are currently pending before the Court, despite its sustained efforts to arrive at an overall settlement of the issue. In 2009 several hundred new applications of this type were lodged.

In view of the lack of significant progress on the issue in Romania, despite dozens of rulings by the Court in which it pointed to the ineffectiveness of the Romanian compensation mechanism, the Court has decided to apply the pilot-judgment procedure to these cases – via two applications which are to receive priority treatment – in the hope that this new initiative will result in steps being taken to put an end to this systemic problem.

The problem of restitution of properties nationalised or confiscated by the communist authorities in Romania

Several restitution laws have been adopted in Romania since the fall of the communist regime, based on the principle of restitution in kind or, where this is not possible, compensation. At certain times this compensation has been capped, at others not. At times it has been payable in monetary form, at times in money or shares, and since 2005 in the form of money or shares through the Proprietatea fund. However, as this fund is still not quoted on the stock exchange, its shares have no market value.

The legal uncertainty created by the plethora of legislative texts and the diverging practices of the domestic courts on this issue has resulted in delayed rulings concerning nationalised properties; to date, only a few thousand people out of the hundreds of thousands who have sought restitution have succeeded in recovering ownership of their properties or obtaining compensation.

The Court’s case-law on the restitution of properties nationalised or confiscated by the communist authorities in Romania

Since 1999 the Court has ruled on numerous occasions that the successive domestic law provisions concerning this compensation mechanism were ineffective. In its judgments in Viasu v. Romania (no. 75951/01, 9 December 2008), Katz v. Romania (no. 29739/03, 20 January 2009) and Faimblat v. Romania (no. 23066/02, 13 January 2009), the Court observed the large scale of the problem and suggested that legislative, administrative and budgetary measures be adopted in order to make the procedure established by the laws on compensation for immovable property genuinely consistent, accessible, speedy and foreseeable.

So far the Court has found over 150 violations in cases of this kind.