CEDH · PRESS;GCJUDGMENTS;ENG — 22 décembre 2009

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .s598389F8 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center; font-size:11pt } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .sA678F94A { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right; font-size:11pt } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s2F5E426D { font-family:Arial; font-size:6pt; font-weight:bold; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s2E932ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:11pt } .s365FF37E { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; font-size:11pt } .s6E42BAA0 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:17pt; font-size:11pt } .s980053D4 { margin-top:17pt; margin-bottom:17pt; font-size:11pt } .sF8D23689 { margin-top:17pt; margin-bottom:5pt; font-size:11pt } .s444FCFCE { margin-top:5pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:11pt } .s99A63BFE { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left; font-size:11pt } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .sA5B1D89 { width:165.75pt; display:inline-block } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s4BAE41EE { font-family:Arial; font-size:11pt } .sBACB3E60 { font-family:Arial; font-size:11pt; text-decoration:underline; color:#800080 } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .s9FE28126 { margin-top:0pt; margin-right:42.5pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left; font-size:11pt } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 }   987 22.12.2009   Press release issued by the Registrar   Grand Chamber judgment [1] Guiso-Gallisay v. Italy (application no. 58858/00)     ASSESSMENT OF LOSS CAUSED BY CONSTRUCTIVE EXPROPRIATION   Application of Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the European Convention on Human Rights     Principal facts   The applicants are three Italian nationals: Stefano Guiso-Gallisay, Gian Francesco Guiso-Gallisay and Antonella Guiso-Gallisay who were born in 1959, 1948 and 1952 respectively.   In 1977 the Italian Administration occupied the land that the applicants owned in Nuoro (Sardinia) with a view to its expropriation and began to develop it. In the absence of any formal expropriation accompanied by compensation, the applicants brought proceedings seeking damages for the unlawful occupation of their land.   Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court The applicants alleged that the occupation of their land had infringed their right to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions, guaranteed by Article   1 of Protocol No.   1 (protection of property) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 7   April 2000 and declared admissible on 2   September 2004. In a judgment of 8   December 2005, the Court held that the interference with the applicants’ right to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions through the constructive expropriation of their land was incompatible with the principle of legality and that there had accordingly been a violation of Article   1 of Protocol No.   1 to the Convention. It also held that the question of the application of Article   41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention was not ready for decision. The judgment on just satisfaction was delivered on 21   October 2008 when the Court decided to vary its case-law on application of Article   41 in the case of indirect expropriation. The method used hitherto was to compensate for losses that would not be covered by payment of a sum obtained by adding the market value of the property to the cost of loss of earnings from the property, by automatically assessing those losses as the gross value of the works carried out by the State then adding the value of the land in today’s prices. However, the Court considered that this method of compensation was not justified and could lead to unequal treatment between applicants depending on the nature of the public works carried out by the public authorities, which was not necessarily linked to the potential of the land in its original state. In order to assess the loss sustained by the applicants, it therefore decided that the date on which they had established with legal certainty that they had lost the right of ownership over the property concerned should be taken into consideration. The total market value of the property fixed on that date by the national courts was then to be adjusted for inflation and increased by the amount of interest due on the date of the judgment’s adoption by the Court. The sum paid to applicants by the authorities of the country concerned was to be deducted from the resulting amount. In the present case, the sum awarded for pecuniary damage amounted to 1,803,374   euros (EUR) for the three applicants jointly. The Court also awarded them EUR   45,000 for non-pecuniary damage and EUR   30,000 for costs and expenses. On 26 January the case was referred to the Grand Chamber at the applicants’ request. A public hearing was held at the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, on 17   June 2009.   Judgment was given by a Grand Chamber of seventeen judges, composed as follows:   Jean-Paul Costa (France), President , Josep Casadevall (Andorra), Corneliu Bîrsan (Romania), Karel Jungwiert (Czech Republic), Vladimiro Zagrebelsky (Italy), Elisabeth Steiner (Austria), Lech Garlicki (Poland) Elisabet Fura (Sweden), Khanlar Hajiyev (Azerbaijan), Dean Spielmann (Luxembourg), Dragoljub Popović (Serbia), Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre (Monaco), Päivi Hirvelä (Finland), George Nicolaou (Cyprus), Luis López Guerra (Spain), Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Nona Tsotsoria (Georgia), judges , and Vincent Berger , Jurisconsult .   Decision of the Court   The Grand Chamber confirmed the change in the case-law described above with regard to the application of Article 41 in cases of constructive expropriation.   It emphasised that the new principles laid down in its judgment could be applied by the national courts in the disputes which were currently pending before them and in future cases.     With regard to the application of those principles to the applicants’ case, the Grand Chamber reached a different conclusion from the Chamber. The latter had held that the date from which the applicants had been certain, from a legal standpoint, of having lost their right of ownership to the disputed property (the date used as the basis for assessing the damage sustained) was 14 July 1997, when the Nuoro District Court declared that the expropriation of the applicants’ land was unlawful. The Grand Chamber found, on the contrary, that the Nuoro District Court had held in its 1997 judgment that the applicants had lost part of their property in 1982 and another part in 1983. In consequence, it used those latter dates as the basis for assessing the just satisfaction to be awarded to the applicants.   Finally, in application of Article 41, the Grand Chamber awarded the three applicants 2,145,000 euros (EUR) jointly in respect of pecuniary damage, EUR 45,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 35,000 for costs and expenses.   Judge Spielmann expressed a dissenting opinion which is annexed to the judgment.   ***   The judgment is available in French and English. This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court. The judgments are available on its   website ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).     Press contacts Stefano Piedimonte (tel: + 33 (0)3 90 21 42 04) or Tracey Turner-Tretz (tel: + 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) Kristina Pencheva-Malinowski (tel: + 33 (0)3 88 41 35 70) Céline Menu-Lange (tel: + 33 (0)3 90 21 58 77) Frédéric Dolt (tel: + 33 (0)3 90 21 53 39) Nina Salomon (tel: + 33 (0)3 90 21 49 79)   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. [1] Grand Chamber judgments are final (Article 44 of the Convention).