Communicated on 22 September 2017

FIRST SECTION

Application no. 60633/15 Krume STOJANOVSKI and others against the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia lodged on 3 December 2015

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns restitution proceedings. The applicants ’ restitution request was dismissed by the domestic restitution commission as well as at two levels of administrative courts, which established that the applicants ’ predecessor, K.S., had never owned the land in question. Instead, according to their findings, a third person C.K. had been the owner at the time of nationalisation.

Later, in a separate set of restitution proceedings concerning the same plot of land, a request for restitution submitted by the heirs of C.K. was also dismissed. The domestic authorities established that it had not been C.K., but rather K.S., who had owned the plot at issue.

Having learnt of that fact, the applicants lodged a request for reopening of the restitution proceedings on account of the discovery of a new fact. This request was initially allowed by the Administrative Court, but was later overturned and dismissed following a request for the protection of legality lodged by the Public Prosecutor with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court established that reopening was not allowed in restitution proceedings, and the Higher Administrative Court accordingly dismissed the applicants ’ request for reopening.

The applicants complain that they were deprived of the possibility to obtain the plot in question on account of an error of fact by the domestic authorities, and that they have no legal means to obtain the property that belongs to them.

QUESTIONS tO THE PARTIES

Did the applicants have at their disposal effective legal means allowing them to claim restitution in respect of the property belonging to their predecessor as required under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and Article 13 of the Convention? In particular, has the refusal of the domestic authorities to allow the reopening of the restitution proceedings, following the errors made by the restitution commission, deprived the applicants of any possibility to obtain the plot of land in question, in respect of which they allegedly had an arguable property claim based on their predecessor ’ s property title?

APPENDIX

N o .

First name

LAST NAME

Birth year

Nationality

Place of residence

Representative

Krume STOJANOVSKI

1943Macedonian

Skopje

A. Andreevski

Silvana JANEVSKA

1965Macedonian

Skopje

A. Andreevski

Branislav JANEVSKI

1937Macedonian

Skopje

A. Andreevski