Depriving the landowner of his property without payment of damages infringes his right to property.
JUDGMENT
Krasteva and others v. Bulgaria 01-06-2017 (no. 5334/11)
SUMMARY
Right to property. Removal of property without compensation regarding the property they had bought in good faith. The ECtHR ruled that there has been a violation of the Convention in respect of property protection.
PROVISION
Article 1 of the First Additional Protocol
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The four applicants relied on Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) to complain that they had been deprived of their property without compensation. In 1968, the second applicant and the antecedents of the other three applicants purchased a plot of land on the outskirts of Sofia. The land in question had originally been collectivised in the years after 1945. In 2002, a group of persons claiming to be the heirs of the original pre-collectivisation owners brought a claim against the applicants for ownership of the land, arguing that they had a right to repossess it. The claimants were ultimately awarded ownership by the courts and the applicants had to surrender possession.
The applicants complained that they had been unfairly deprived of land that had been purchased in good faith, and that they had not been awarded any compensation.
The applicants are Donka Krasteva, Maria Piskova, Angelina Piskova-Indzhova, and Iskra Piskova.
They are Bulgarian nationals who were born in 1932, 1929, 1965, and 1956 respectively and live in Sofia.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
Just satisfaction: EUR 82,000 for pecuniary damage, to be distributed among the applicants according to the size of their respective shares in the property lost; EUR 1,000 to each of the four applicants for non-pecuniary damage; and EUR 2,979 jointly to Ms Krasteva, Ms Piskova and Ms Piskova-Indzhova for costs and expenses (to be distributed among them as follows: one half for Ms Krasteva and one fourth each for Ms Piskova and Ms Piskova-Indzhova)
