Communicated on 11 March 2020 Published on 30 March 2020

FOURTH SECTION

Application no. 7178/17 LABORATORUL DE CONSTRUCȚII BUCUREȘTI S.A. against Romania lodged on 13 January 2017

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns the applicant company’s alleged impossibility to lawfully access the premises of its headquarters having regard to the authorities’ failure to either ensure that the company continues to have the long-established right of way it had used ever since the company was created (1990), or to provide it with an alternative right of access.

By final decision of 11 March 2010 the Bucharest Court of Appeal considered that the applicant company could no longer use the ancient way of access to the public road, in so far as the applicant company’s neighbour, a public school, had rightfully placed a barrier, thus seeking to protect the attending pupils, whose physical safety was endangered by the car traffic determined by the company’s activities. The applicant company was advised to seek a right of access using a different public road.

Consecutively, the applicant company requested the Bucharest municipality to allow it to adapt the road and create vehicle access through an alternative public road, thus aiming to obtain acknowledgment of a respective right of way. On 2 August 2013 the municipality issued a building permit for the said works, which were executed the same year. However, when the applicant company subsequently sought the acknowledgment of the right of way, the municipality answered on 2 December 2014 that such a right was no longer provided for under the new Civil Code which had entered into force in 2011.

The final judgment triggering the six-months calculation is the judgment of 22 April 2016 (notified to the applicant company on 13 July 2016), by which the Bucharest Court of Appeal dismissed the applicant company’s request to have a right of access acknowledged by the local authorities; the court indicated that an appropriate manner to obtain the requested access would be for the applicant company to ask the authorities to elaborate an urban and regional planning that would provide for such a right of access.

The applicant company has launched the procedure seeking to obtain the indicated urban and regional planning; however, on 26 May 2016 the local authorities rejected its request, in so far as the applicant company had had no right of way established, which rendered the building permit issued in 2013 as unlawful, as it had been issued to an entity which had no right to build on the respective land.

Currently, the applicant company claims to make use of a provisional solution to access an alternative public road; however, this factual situation is not validated in any manner from a legal perspective.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Has there been an interference with the applicant company’ s peaceful enjoyment of possessions, within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 , on account of the authorities’ alleged failure to ensure and acknowledge its right of access to the public road ?

2. If so, was that interference in compliance with the requirements of the above provision ?

In particular, did that interference impose an excessive individual burden on the applicant company (see Immobiliare Saffi v. Italy , [GC], no. 22774/93, § 59, ECHR 1999-V )?

The parties are invited to submit all relevant documents as well as domestic practice in relation to the factual and legal aspects raised by the above-mentioned complaint, including a plan of the area at issue.