PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE VEHABOVIĆ

I regret that I am unable to subscribe to the view of the majority that there has been a violation of Article 8 in this case.

In short, I cannot accept the approach taken by the majority that the applicants can obtain protection under Article 8 of the Convention when it appears from the facts that one of the applicants had an apartment, which was donated to her daughter only in 2013, and that the land on which the applicants had reconstructed a cabin and converted it into a solid one-storey brick house without any permission from the authorities was the subject of a property dispute between one of the applicants and other members of her family.

I disagree with the majority that the State is obliged in all circumstances to carry out a detailed review of the proportionality of each and every demolition order, even in circumstances such as these in which it is clear that the second applicant cannot prove any of his allegations and nor can he prove that either he or he and the first a pplicant had established a long ‑ lasting and strong connection with the premises in issue to be regarded as their home within the scope of Article 8 of the Convention. Furthermore, they could not prove that they had acted bona fide .

This area is par excellence an area in which the State enforces laws to control the use of property in the public interest (see Depalle v. France [GC], no. 34044/02, § 87, ECHR 2010) and in which a wide margin of appreciation applies (ibid., § 84).

It is hard to imagine the implications for the enforcement of planning regulations in other States if this judgment is to be understood as requiring a detailed proportionality review in each individual case. In this connection the Court, in the recent case of Garib v. the Netherlands (no. 43494/09, §§ 125-26, 23 February 2016, not yet final), found that the respondent party was, in principle, entitled to adopt the relevant inner-city housing legislation and policy. In finding thus, the Court appeared to cite with approval the existence of (and demonstrated reliance upon) a hardship clause.

This judgment does not sufficiently distinguish the facts of the present case from earlier cases concerning the enforcement of demolition orders for planning offences, which were examined under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and in which no violation was found, notably Hamer v. Belgium (no. 21861/03, ECHR 2007-V (extracts)), which concerned a building in existence for twenty-seven years before the planning offence was recorded and for a further ten years before it was demolished, and the more recent (Grand Chamber) case of Depalle (cited above), which concerned a family home near a public beach that had been in existence since 1969 on the basis of authorisations limited in time and which ceased with the enactment of specific coastal planning laws following which an order to demolish was made (no separate issue under Article 8).