The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has awarded a total of €361,145 in damages in three separate cases, to four Maltese citizens after the Court found the Maltese government guilty when it expropriated private property without adequate compensation.
The complainants were Joseph John Edwards; Anna Fleri Soler and Herbert Camilleri; and Attilio Ghigo.
In its judgments delivered on Thursday, the ECHR unanimously awarded €39,750 to Edwards, €287,675 to Fleri Soler and Camilleri, and €33,720 to Ghigo. Maltese judge Giovanni Bonello was one of the seven-judge panel that heard the three cases.
In judgments delivered in 2006, the Court had held there had been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) when the government requisitioned the properties – for more than 30 years in the case of Edwards, for almost 65 years in the case of Fleri Soler and Camilleri, and for almost 22 years in the case of Ghigo.
This had imposed a landlord-tenant relationship on the applicants under which they received only a small amount of rent and a minimal profit.
But the Court had declared at the time that the question of the application of Article 41 on adequate compensation, was not yet ready for decision.
In Thursday’s judgements on the compensation issue, the ECHR said that in assessing the pecuniary damages sustained by the applicants, the Court had studied rental values on the Maltese property market over the past years.
It also considered whether the damages suffered would be legitimate. In exceptional circumstances only, compensation can be justifiably less than the full market value or none at all, if requisition served the public interest and for measures aimed at greater social justice.
In the cases of Edwards and Ghigo, the Court identified a deficiency in the Maltese housing legislation at issue. It considered that, in the execution of its judgments, Malta had to set up remedial procedures to balance the interests of the landlords and the community.
It said its concern was to “facilitate the rapid and effective suppression of a defective national legislation hindering human-rights protection.”
The Court said the Maltese government has to “put an end to the systemic violation of the right of property identified in the present case” and to introduce in its legal system “a mechanism maintaining a fair balance between the interests of landlords, including their entitlement to derive profit from their property, and the general interest of the community – including the availability of sufficient accommodation for the less well-off – in accordance with the principles of the protection of property rights under the Convention.”
It also told the government to consider to establish the criteria defining a ‘tenant in need’ (which the government described in its observations as ‘individuals who would not have been able to afford reasonably priced accommodation’), ‘fair rent’ and ‘decent profit’.”

czahra@mediatoday.com.mt