FOURTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 67380/14 Tsvetana Nedyalkova ILIEVA and Plamen Georgiev ILIEV against Bulgaria

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 27 September 2022 as a Committee composed of:

Iulia Antoanella Motoc , President,

Yonko Grozev ,

Pere Pastor Vilanova , Judges,

and Ludmila Milanova, Acting Deputy Section Registrar

Having regard to the above application lodged on 9 October 2014,

Having regard to the declaration submitted by the respondent Government on 3 May 2022, requesting the Court to strike the application out of the list of cases and the applicants’ reply to that declaration,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

FACTS AND PROCEDURE

1. The applicants, Ms Tsvetana Nedyalkova Ilieva and Mr Plamen Georgiev Iliev, are Bulgarian nationals who were born in 1939 and 1964 respectively and live in Sofia. They were represented before the Court by Mr D. Ganev, a lawyer practising in Sofia.

2. The Bulgarian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Ms M. Kotseva of the Ministry of Justice.

3. The application was communicated to the Government .

4. The applicants, whose land was expropriated for the construction of a road, complained that the compensation awarded to them on that occasion had been too low. They relied on Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

THE LAW

5. After the failure of attempts to reach a friendly settlement, on 3 May 2022 the Government submitted a unilateral declaration with a view to resolving the issue raised by the application. They requested the Court to strike out the application in accordance with Article 37 of the Convention.

6 . The declaration reads as follows:

“By means of the present declaration, the Government of the Republic of Bulgaria acknowledge violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights in the above-mentioned case pending before the European Court of Human Rights. The violation stems from the disproportionately low compensation awarded to the applicants for their property expropriated for State needs, and in particular for the construction of public roads.

The amount of pecuniary damages proposed by the Government is based on an expert report prepared by experts of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, Road Infrastructure Agency, and is in the amount of [Bulgarian levs] (BGN) 20.05 per square metre. From this amount has been deducted the compensation awarded at the national level.

In determining the proposed amount of pecuniary damage, the Government take into account that at the relevant period the Council of Ministers decided to settle numerous cases similar to that of the applicants and pay the compensation per square metre indicated above. Many cases were in fact settled, concerning land located in the same area, expropriated for the same infrastructure project, and with the same decision of the Council of Ministers.

In para. 22 of the judgment Kostov and Others v. Bulgaria (nos. 66581/12 and 25054/15), the Court described these settlements as follows: “ At the beginning of 2015 the Council of Ministers settled several other similar cases that had been pending before the Supreme Administrative Court, concerning agricultural land of unspecified category in the same zone as the second and third applicants’ and expropriated on the strength of the same decision of 21 December 2013. It agreed to pay compensation of BGN 20.05 (equivalent to [euros] (EUR) 10) per square metre to the owners. The decision to seek a settlement, according to a memorandum submitted to the Council of Ministers by the Minister of Public Works in December 2014, had been taken in order to unblock urgently the construction of the ring road, delayed by numerous applications for judicial reviews. The Minister of Public Works noted that in a neighbouring zone where land had been expropriated as well, the owners had been paid the compensation indicated above, calculated on the basis of sufficient comparable plots, and that most of the owners had not applied for a judicial review. Such compensation was therefore considered appropriate for the cases to be settled. ”

The explanations above concerned the case of Popova and Velichkov v. Bulgaria , examined in the judgment Kostov and Others v. Bulgaria , where land was expropriated for the same infrastructure project. In that case the Court pointed out two indications of a possible market price – BGN 25 per square metre, based on the only market analogue (insufficient to calculate a market value), and BGN 20.05 per square metre, as in the above-mentioned agreements proposed by the Council of Ministers (para. 83 of the judgment). The Government thus consider the compensation of BGN 20.05 per square metre proposed in the present case reasonable and adequate.

In view of the violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, the Government offer to pay the applicants Tsvetana Nedyalkova Ilieva and Plamen Georgiev Iliev EUR 39,512 (thirty-nine thousand five hundred and twelve) in total to cover any pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage and costs and expenses, plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicants (respectively their heirs).

The sum above will be converted into Bulgarian levs at the rate applicable on the date of payment, and will be payable within three months from the date of notification of the decision taken by the Court to strike the case out of its list of cases. In the event of failure to pay the sum within the said three-month period, the Government undertake to pay simple interest on it, from expiry of that period until settlement, at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points. The payment will constitute the final resolution of the case.”

7. By a letter of 14 June 2022, the applicants stated that they were not satisfied with the terms of the unilateral declaration. They considered the amount of pecuniary damage offered by the Government “significantly lower” than the fair market value of their expropriated land (see paragraph 13 below). The applicants complained in addition that the Government had not offered to pay them interest on the compensation due, for the period after the expropriation of their land.

8. The Court reiterates that Article 37 of the Convention provides that it may at any stage of the proceedings decide to strike an application out of its list of cases where the circumstances lead to one of the conclusions specified under (a), (b) or (c) of paragraph 1 of that Article. Article 37 § 1 (c) enables the Court in particular to strike a case out of its list if:

“for any other reason established by the Court, it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the applications”.

9. In certain circumstances, the Court may strike out an application under Article 37 § 1 (c) on the basis of a unilateral declaration by a respondent Government even if the applicants wish the examination of the case to be continued. The relevant principles in that regard have in particular been set in Tahsin Acar v. Turkey ((preliminary objections) [GC], no. 26307/95, §§ 75 ‑ 77, ECHR 2003-VI).

10. The Court has found in a number of cases concerning the expropriation of property for public works, including against Bulgaria, that in such a case the compensation offered to the owners has to be “reasonably related to the value” of that property at the time the applicants lost ownership thereof (see, among others, Vistiņš and Perepjolkins v. Latvia [GC], no. 71243/01, § 110, 25 October 2012; Vistiņš and Perepjolkins v. Latvia (just satisfaction) [GC], no. 71243/01, § 36, ECHR 2014; Moreno Diaz Peña and Others v. Portugal , no. 44262/10, § 76, 4 June 2015; as well as Kostov and Others , cited above, §§ 72 and 102).

11. The present case is very similar to Popova and Velichkov (no. 25054/15, examined in Kostov and Others , cited above), which concerned the expropriation of land in the same area and for the same infrastructure project. In both cases the domestic courts, examining the transactions with other plots of land in the area, reached the conclusion that only one of those transactions – the sale of land for BGN 25 per square metre – met the respective statutory requirements, but that it was insufficient to establish reliably a market price (see the Government’s declaration in paragraph 6 above).

12. Concerning the case of Popova and Velichkov , the Court stated that it could not reach a definite conclusion that the amount of BGN 25 per square metre, or the BGN 20.05 at which other expropriated owners in the same area had agreed to have their claims settled (see the Government’s unilateral declaration in paragraph 6 above), represented the market price of the applicants’ land (see Kostov and Others , cited above, § 84). Nevertheless, these values were seen as indicators of such a price (ibid., § 85).

13 . As to the present case, the applicants submitted a valuation prepared by an expert. The latter considered that the market value of the expropriated land in 2015 had been equivalent to BGN 32 per square metre. This calculation was based on two transactions with comparable land. One of them was the sale of a plot of land for about BGN 25 per square metre, already discussed above. The second was the inclusion of land in the capital of a company, with an indication that it had been valued at the equivalent of BGN 38.70 per square metre. However, that latter transaction was discussed at the domestic level by the Supreme Administrative Court both in Popova and Velichkov (see Kostov and Others , cited above, § 20 in fine ) and in the present case, and was found not to be a valid comparable, because the plot had not been “offered for sale on the free market”. The Court finds these reasons put forward by the domestic court adequate and sufficient.

14. In view of the above, the Court reaches the same conclusion as in Popova and Velichkov (see Kostov and Others , cited above, §§ 83-85) – that, while it is not in a position to establish definitely the market value of the applicants’ land at the time of its expropriation, the above-mentioned values – BGN 25 and BGN 20.05 per square metre – could serve as its guidance.

15. Given the above, namely those two values indicative of the market price of the applicants’ land at the time of expropriation, one of which was relied on by the applicants themselves (see paragraph 13 above), the Court finds that the compensation offered in the Government’s unilateral declaration – BGN 20.05 per square metre – is reasonable and adequate.

16. The Court notes in addition that in Kostov and Others (cited above, § 107) it found no ground to award interest.

17. The global amount proposed by the Government – EUR 39,512 – takes account of the size of the applicants’ expropriated plot (3,479 square metres) and the compensation already paid at the domestic level (BGN 2,843, the equivalent of EUR 1,454). The amount for pecuniary damage is thus about EUR 34,200. This leaves about EUR 5,300 to compensate any non-pecuniary damage suffered by the applicants, as well as any costs and expenses incurred; the applicants made no objections concerning these two heads of compensation.

18. In view of the above, having regard to the nature of the admissions contained in the Government’s declaration and the amount of compensation proposed, the Court considers that it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the application (Article 37 § 1 (c)).

19. Moreover, in light of the above considerations, and in particular given its case-law on the topic, some of which cited above, the Court is satisfied that respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto does not require it to continue the examination of the application (Article 37 § 1 in fine ).

20. Finally, the Court emphasises that, should the Government fail to comply with the terms of their unilateral declaration, the application could be restored to the list in accordance with Article 37 § 2 of the Convention ( Josipović v. Serbia (dec.), no. 18369/07, 4 March 2008).

21. In view of the above, it is appropriate to strike the case out of the list.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Takes note of the terms of the respondent Government’s declaration under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and of the modalities for ensuring compliance with the undertakings referred to therein;

Decides to strike the application out of its list of cases in accordance with Article 37 § 1 (c) of the Convention.

Done in English and notified in writing on 20 October 2022.

Ludmila Milanova Iulia Antoanella Motoc Acting Deputy Registrar President