PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGHIDES

1. The judgment rightly finds (see paragraph 56 and point 2 of the operative part) that there has been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 guaranteeing the right to the protection of property, as the applicants have still not received any compensation to date, about sixty years since their property was compulsorily acquired (on 17 March 1961) and despite the fact that the Constitutional Court, in January 2018, awarded them 26,093 euros (EUR) in compensation for the land taken from them (see paragraph 22 of the judgment).

2. My first disagreement with the judgment is that, despite the above finding to which I fully subscribe, when the judgment comes to determine the amount to be awarded to the applicants in respect of pecuniary damage, for the violation of their property rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, it does not take – or sufficiently take – into account, inter alia, the following two important factors for which the applicants should not be blamed and for which the only responsible party is the respondent State: (a) the passage of time between the taking of the property on 17 March 1961 (date of Governor ’ s declaration published in the Government Gazette, which was the relevant date announcing the compulsory acquisition, see paragraph s 4 and 27 of the judgment and S ection 3 of the Land Acquisition Ordinance (Chapter 88 of the Laws of Malta)) and the present time, thus almost 60 years, without the applicants receiving any compensation; and (b) the passage of time between the taking of the property on 17 March 1961 and the date on which the “notice to treat” was sent to the applicants, i.e. 14 January 2003 (see paragraph 6), thus 42 years without any legal avenue for the applicants during that time to institute court proceedings in order to claim compensation, as is clear from the decision of the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence (at first instance), which found for this reason a violation of Article 6 of the Convention, a decision upheld on appeal by the Constitutional Court, which also awarded the applicants EUR 7,500 for non-pecuniary damage in respect of this violation (see, in the same vein, Frendo Randon and Others v. Malta, no. 2226/10, § 73, 22 November 2011).

3. As the domestic authorities and the judgment in the present case decided, the value of the expropriated land was assessed according to its categorisation (i.e. status) and value in 1961, when the land was agricultural, taking into account inflation and adding interest, while rejecting the submission of the applicants that given the lapse of time they should be compensated on the basis of the categorisation of the land and its value as at 14 January 2003, when a “notice to treat” was sent to them and thus at a time when their land had become developable and was worth much more than in 1961; it was not sufficient merely to take inflation and interest into account.

4 . The delay of much more than half a century was attributed to a fault of the respondent State and not to any fault of the applicants, who have nevertheless received no compensation, and it would be entirely unfair for the applicants to receive the amount that is decided in the present judgment, because such a low amount, objectively seen today, would allow the respondent State to take advantage of its own delay and fault. I will return to this point later on.

5 . The Court, in the present case, awarded the applicants the amount of EUR 27,000 in respect of pecuniary damage (see paragraph 88 of the judgment and point 5 (a) ( i ) of its operative part), on the basis of the status applicable to the expropriated land as of 17 March 1961, when the Governor ’ s declaration was made, including inflation and interest. The Court did so because it considered the date of that declaration to be the relevant date for assessing both the categorisation and the value of the land. In their submissions before the Court on just satisfaction , the applicants requested EUR 270,000 for pecuniary damage as the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence had awarded this sum to them on the basis of both the categorisation and value of their land as at 14 January 2003; which decision, however, was overturned by the Constitutional Court, simply basing the assessment on a different date of valuation, i.e. 17 March 1961. The amount of EUR 270,000, which no domestic court has in fact disapproved as not reflecting the correct amount based on the 2003 value, is ten times the amount that the Court eventually awarded the applicants.

6 . There are two main trends to be found in the case-law of the Court as regards the relevant date for the determination of rights to property that has been compulsory acquired, based on its status and its value. According to one line of case-law, the relevant time is the date when the land was taken; thus in the present case, 17 March 1961. In particular, compensation is then assessed by ascertaining the market value of the expropriated property at that time, adjusted to inflation and with interest added, as was the majority ’ s approach in the present case (see cases referred to in paragraph 87 of the judgment, namely, Frendo Randon and Others v. Malta (just satisfaction), no. 2226/10, § 20, 9 July 2013, and Azzopardi v. Malta , no. 28177/12 , § 66, 6 November 2014, also cited at § 87 of the judgment; see also Michael Theodossiou Ltd v. Cyprus, no. 31811/04, §§ 15-23, 14 April 2015) .

7 . The other trend supports the view that the relevant date for assessing expropriated property and its status is the present time, when the Court itself finds a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. According to this view, the present-day or current land market values are relevant when it comes to compensating an expropriated owner for his or her land in its present state. An authority for this approach is Loukia Serghides v. Cyprus ((just satisfaction) , no. 44730/98, §§ 9 and 27, 10 June 2003), the relevant passages of which are cited below, one of which refers to what the applicant in that case had argued, citing also a Grand Chamber case, namely, Former King of Greece and Others v. Greece, while the other passage refers to what the Court accepted:

“9. As for the date of valuing the property, the applicant submitted that, in accordance with the Court ’ s case-law, the amount of compensation should be calculated on the basis of the current value of the property (relying on Papamichalopoulos and Others v. Greece (Article 50), judgment of 31 October 1995, Series A no. 330 ‑ B, §§ 37 and 39; Former King of Greece and Others v. Greece [GC] (just satisfaction), no. 25701/94, § 76, unreported). Accordingly, the expert valuations she presented were based on recent sales of certain plots of land in the same vicinity. She also emphasised that the date of the valuation of the property had to be as close as possible to the date of payment of compensation in order to ensure the adequacy of the latter (relying on the two judgments in Guillemin v. France, judgments of 21 February 1997, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997 ‑ I, §§ 54-56, and of 2 September 1998, (Article 50), Reports, 1998 ‑ VI, §§ 23-24).”

“27. The Court considers that the assessment must be made using present day land values, when the Court itself found a violation of the Convention.”

8 . I would suggest that, taking into account what has been said in paragraphs 2-4 of my opinion above, the Court, after finding a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 should have considered, as the Court did in Loukia Serghides and Christoforou ((merits) , no. 44730/98 , § 80, 5 November 2002), “that the question of the application of Article 41 [was] not ready for decision and that it must be reserved, having regard to the possibility of an agreement between the respondent State and the applicant (Rule 75 §§ 1 and 4 of the Rules of Court)”, thus requesting the parties to submit a valuation based on current prices, as the Court in that case ultimately decided (see Loukia Serghides (just satisfaction) , cited above, § 27).

9 . Since the present case was not adjourned by the Court as to the issue of just satisfaction, in the manner proposed above, I will proceed to assess the sum to be awarded to the applicants based on the value and status of their land as at 14 January 2003, when the “notice to treat” was sent to them, as argued by them before the domestic courts as well as before the Court. This is the time at which both parties first had the possibility of starting negotiations regarding the compensation issue, as well as the time when the applicants were able to request compensation before the domestic courts. It is to be emphasised that the applicants were not only deprived of their property in 1961 on a compulsory basis, they were also deprived of their right to submit in court proceedings any claim for compensation for their land over a period of 42 years, up to the date when the “notice to treat” was sent to them, i.e. 14 January 2003 (see paragraph 2 above). Regarding the latter, it is to be reiterated that the Constitutional Court found that there had been a violation of Article 6 of the Convention. As the time of the notice to treat in 2003 was the point at which the applicants were ultimately able to claim compensation, any earlier date than that – at worst 17 March 1961, dating back 42 years earlier – should be excluded as being irrelevant and unfair for assessing that compensation. As is indicated in paragraph 29 of the judgment, before 2002 the relevant date for assessing compensation was the date of the “notice to treat”. Had the notice to treat been sent to the applicants in 2002 or earlier, when the relevant date for assessing compensation was the date of the notice to treat and when their land was no longer agricultural but already developable, they would have benefited from a much higher amount in compensation. It was neither their action nor their choice that led to the notice to treat being sent to them 42 years after the declaration of acquisition, nor was it their action or choice that led to the notice to treat not being sent to them any time up to 2002, before which the relevant time for assessing compensation would have been far more beneficial to them.

10 . In my view it is unacceptable for the respondent State to profit tenfold, being exempted from having to pay as much as EUR 243,000 in compensation to the applicants (i.e. EUR 270,000, the valuation on the basis of the status of the property acquired and its value on 14 January 2003, minus EUR 27,000, the valuation made by the Court on the basis of the status of the property acquired and its value on 17 March 1961) for the pecuniary damage resulting from a violation which has been found by the Court, taking into consideration, inter alia, the following factors and arguments:

(a) The respondent State should not be allowed to profit from its own delay, of about 60 years and ongoing, before paying compensation, and of 42 years before sending the applicants the notice to treat so as to enable them to claim compensation. This delay had the effect of reducing considerably the amount of compensation, as stated above. The respondent State, since it decided in 1961 that the applicants ’ land was needed in the public interest and proceeded with the compulsory acquisition with the Governor ’ s declaration on 17 March 1961, should have been ready to start negotiations with the applicants for the amount due to them immediately or within a reasonable time. The fact that this did not happen until 14 January 2003, 42 years later, is far from being immediate or a reasonable time after the Governor ’ s declaration on the expropriation. The timing decided by the respondent State to send the “notice to treat” to the applicants, immediately after the Law had changed in 2002, with regard to the relevant date for assessing the value and status of the property in question, thus no longer the date of the notice to treat but going back to the date of the Governor ’ s declaration (see paragraph 9 above), cannot escape my attention and my impression is that the timing for such decision may not be accidental. In my mind, the fact that the respondent State decided to send the notice to treat 42 years late, and the fact that after 60 years compensation has still not been paid, are not unconnected.

(b) In connection also with (a) above, the respondent State should not be allowed to profit from its own action or inaction which resulted in a violation of a Convention right. In my view, this can be considered the Convention version of the legal maxims “no one should be allowed to profit from his own wrong” or “no one can improve his position by his own wrongdoing” ( nullus commodum capere protest de injuria sua propria or nemo ex duo delicto meliorum suam conditionem facere potest ) [1] . The respondent State was unanimously found in the judgment to be (a) in violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 for not paying compensation to the applicants for about 60 years (see paragraphs 55-56), and (b) in violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention for the lack of objective impartiality of the Constitutional Court (see paragraphs 80-81 of the judgment). The Court made awards to the applicants in respect not only of pecuniary damage but also of non-pecuniary damage, thus rendering the violation even greater (see paragraph 89 and point 5 (a) (ii) of the operative part of the judgment). In addition, the Constitutional Court confirmed a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention on the ground that the applicant had had no access to a court to pursue compensation proceedings and awarded the applicants EUR 7,500 for non-pecuniary damage in this respect (see paragraph 22). The respondent State had, in effect, asked the Court to reach a finding to the detriment of the applicants, even though the disadvantage arose from actions or inactions on its part, regarding which the Court and the Constitutional Court have found violations of the Convention provisions and rights.

(c) I would be contradicting myself, with all that this entails, if, on the one hand, I were to rightly argue, as the judgment does, that there has been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, and, on the other, to wrongly overlook, as the judgment does, the repercussions of the facts underlying the violation on the fair amount of compensation due to the applicants.

(d) The respondent State has never paid any compensation in respect of the applicants ’ expropriated property, despite the fact that the Constitutional Court ordered the State to pay them EUR 26,093 (see paragraph 22) and despite the fact that the applicants asked the Government to pay this compensation (see paragraphs 26 and 87). It is striking that the respondent State not only disrespected the applicants by failing to pay any compensation to them and by prolonging the compulsory acquisition process for about 60 years, it also ignored the finding of its own Constitutional Court, the apex court of the State, by arguing before this Court without any justification that it should pay only EUR 15,000 (see paragraph 86), thus EUR 11,093 less in compensation than the amount awarded to them by the Constitutional Court; as if this Court were a fourth ‑ instance court and as if they were allowed to plead as applicants. The respondent State also asked the Court not to award the applicants any amount for non-pecuniary damage since the Constitutional Court on 26 January 2018 had already awarded them EUR 7,500; as if this award would cover all the violations alleged by the applicants before the Court. In any event, the respondent State had not yet paid even that amount (see paragraphs 26 and 87).

In connection with the above, it should be emphasised that when a State is the respondent State to an application filed by an individual under Article 34 of the Convention, the Court considers all the authorities of that State – judiciary, executive and legislature – as one, all part of the State, the “High Contracting Party” (see Articles 1 and 19 of the Convention). The respondent Government cannot appear before the Court representing only the executive branch of the State, as they appear to have done in the present case, having a line of argument that is different from the judiciary and even its apex court, i.e. the Constitutional Court. Moreover, in the present case the respondent State imputed any delay in the realisation of the project for which the applicants ’ land had been expropriated to “extremely complex matters relating to town planning” (see paragraph 39), thus to a delay by one of its administrative branches, as if that branch did not belong to the respondent State.

e) In case of doubt the Court should find in favour of the victim and the effective protection of his or her human right ( in dubio in favorem pro juris/pro libertatae /pro persona and ut res magis valeat quam pereat ), but in the present case there is no doubt about the fault and so it is even more crucial for the Court to award just compensation and not to deprive the applicants tenfold of the amount due to them. On the in dubio pro libertatae /persona principle, Professor Rudolf Bernhardt and former President of the Court insightfully said the following:

“Treaty obligations are in case of doubt and in principle not to be interpreted in favor of State sovereignty. It is obvious that this conclusion can have considerable consequences for human rights conventions. Every effective protection of individual freedoms restricts State sovereignty, and it is by no means State sovereignty which in case of doubt has priority. Quite to the contrary, the object and purpose of human rights treaties may often lead to a broader interpretation of individual rights on the one hand and restrictions on State activities on the other.” [2]

f) The assessment of compensation based on the status of the land in 1961, being ten times less than an assessment based on that of 2003, would contravene two overarching principles of the Convention, namely the principle of effectiveness [3] and the principle of proportionality, since such assessment would amount to a negation or disregard of the essence of the right to the protection of property and in particular of its requirement of just compensation in case of compulsory acquisition.

The judgment, in paragraphs 49-53, referring to the proportionality test, maintains that this test has been applied, and in paragraph 54 it seems to justify why the amount of compensation awarded was based on the 1961 status (and therefore was lower than the amount requested by the applicants), arguing that it “cannot find that, in the circumstances of the present case, the applicants have not been awarded adequate compensation”. The justification given by the Court (see paragraph 54) for basing its decision on the assessment of compensation on 1961 values was because the applicants had not complained domestically about the lack of public interest due to the delay in implementing the envisaged project, a complaint which would have had an impact on the compensation payable (the Court cites Vassal l o v. Malta (just satisfaction), no. 57862/09, §§ 18-20, 6 November 2012).

The Court refers to paragraphs 18-20 of Vassal l o but not, however, also to paragraphs 21-22, which if taken into account would change its decision. Paragraphs 18-22 read as follows:

“18. The Court considers that compensation in the present case could have been based on the lines of Schembri ... only if the breach of the applicant ’ s property rights arose solely as a result of the lapse of time during which she had been denied compensation. The Court, however, notes that in the principal judgment in the instant case, it also held that the lapse of twenty-eight years from the date of the taking of the property without any concrete use having been made of it, in accordance with the requirements of the initial taking, raised an issue under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, in respect of the public interest requirement (§ 43).

19. Thus, the Court considers that compensation in the present case must be awarded on the lines of that in Motais de Narbonne v. France ((just satisfaction), no. 48161/99, § 20, 27 May 2003), and Keçecioğlu and Others v. Turkey ((just satisfaction), no. 37546/02, § 19, 20 July 2010), in which the Court had in its principal judgments found a breach of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 on account of a significant delay between a decision to expropriate property and the undertaking of a project in the public interest which had denied the applicants the appreciation ( ‘ plus-value ’ ) of their property (see Motais de Narbonne v. France , no. 48161/99, § 19, 2 July 2002 and Keçecioğlu and Others v. Turkey , no. 37546/02, §§ 28-29, 8 April 2008). In both these cases, where the violation pertained to a lack of public interest, the Court considered under Article 41 that the applicants were to be paid compensation corresponding to the appreciation they had been denied. It thus awarded pecuniary damage on the basis of the then current market value of that property ( ‘ la valeur vénale actuelle du bâtiment ’ ) and deducted what the applicants had already received in compensation for the expropriation years before.

20. However, on the one hand, the Court notes that, unlike in the above cases, where the planned project was never carried out, in the present case, in 2002, twenty-eight years after the taking, the authorities undertook the originally planned project in the public interest, namely the construction of apartments and maisonettes intended for social housing. The Court considers that this is a matter which has to be given some consideration. On the other hand, in the present case no payment has ever been made to the applicant, another issue which was at the source of the upheld violation, and which is particularly relevant to the calculation in the present case.

21 . ... Thus, in assessing the amount due to the applicant the Court has, as far as appropriate, considered information available to it on land values on the Maltese property market today.

22. Having regard to the above factors, the Court considers it reasonable to award the applicant, as one of eleven owners, EUR 50,000 in pecuniary damage.”

The facts of the present case are more striking than those of any other cases referred to in Vassal l o in the sense of requiring just satisfaction based on present-day values. In the present case the lapse of time during which the applicants had been denied compensation was about 60 years, while in Vassal l o it was 28 years. In the present case, the school for which the compulsory acquisition had been made was built in 1993 (see paragraph 39), 32 years after the declaration of compulsory acquisition, while in Vassal l o the expropriation was materialised 28 years after the acquisition. The Court in Vassal l o awarded compensation at present-day values (“on land values on the Maltese property market today” (§ 21, emphasis added)). The Court in Vassal l o , though it referred to some of its case-law where it had awarded compensation at present-day values because the compulsory acquisition had not been materialised , nevertheless awarded compensation at present-day values owing here to the long period of time between the acquisition and the payment due.

Accordingly, what is said in the present judgment (paragraphs 47 and 54), that the applicants had not complained domestically about the delay in implementing the envisaged project, is not only overly formalistic but can also be criticised on many other fronts. Vassa l lo , cited by the Court in support of its judgment, on the contrary, does not in fact support the majority view but rather the view in this dissenting opinion. This is so because in Vassal l o the project was also implemented, as in the present case, after very many years and the Court nevertheless awarded compensation at present-day values. In any event, the applicants in the present case, being awarded compensation by the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence on the basis of the 2003 categorisation and value, as claimed by them, had no reason to raise specifically the issue of the delay in the implementation of the project. But even without it being raised specifically, this issue was nonetheless a relevant fact before the said domestic court, which must have taken it into consideration in deciding to base its award of compensation on the 2003 categorisation and value.

Furthermore, what the Court says in paragraph 54 of the judgment, namely that it “cannot find that, in the circumstances of the present case, the applicants have not been awarded adequate compensation”, is with due respect invalid, firstly, because the amount awarded by the Constitutional Court had never been paid by the respondent State and therefore the position of the applicants was similar to that of the applicant in Vassal l o ; and, secondly, because what is said in paragraph 54 contradicts the basis on which the Court unanimously found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, namely the fact that no compensation had been paid.

11. It is unprecedented what happened to the applicants and their property in the present case. In my humble view, the compulsory acquisition of their property which occurred in 1961 in fact amounted to confiscation. The applicants had no right to claim compensation up to 2003. They had no right to challenge the validity of the acquisition (see Article 6 of the relevant Ordinance) until 1987, when people in Malta started having a right to challenge human rights violations before the courts of constitutional jurisdiction, without any time-limit (this was not, however, a complaint before the Court). And this could be a reason why the applicants did not challenge the validity of the compulsory acquisition of their property, if they had so wished. The applicants had obtained no compensation for about 60 years and the matter was still pending. They had lost possession of their land and the State had immediately taken possession of it and had built a school on it in 1993, without any requisition order or rent to be paid to the applicants and without, to date, the State obtaining ownership (since the compensation issue is still pending). The applicants were stripped of all their rights as owners, which they should have retained in a democratic State, a member State of the Council of Europe. In other words, the applicants, as regards their property rights, have been victimised for about 60 years and still today, without any compensation ever being paid to them.

12. In view of the above, I disagree with point 5 (a) ( i ) in the operative part of the judgment regarding the amount of just satisfaction (pecuniary damage) to be awarded to the applicants, namely EUR 27,000. Since I do not have any evidence about the present-day value of the expropriated property, from either party, I cannot proceed to estimate the compensation on the basis of that value. I would, however, award the applicants EUR 270,000, adding both inflation and interest since 2003 when the notice to treat was sent to them. This is what the applicants requested before the Court (see paragraphs 36 and 85 of the judgment) and that was the amount awarded to them by the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence, having before it all the relevant evidence as to the current value (see paragraph 17).

13 . My second disagreement with the judgment is that it decides not to examine the alleged violation of Article 14 of the Convention, read in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, on the basis, as the judgment argues, that the applicants did not contest that the law at the relevant time provided that they should be paid on the basis of the categorisation of the land at the time of the Governor ’ s declaration (see paragraphs 50 and 82 ‑ 83). However, this reference to the applicants ’ position is, in my humble view, not quite correct, since they have always maintained before the domestic courts (see, inter alia, paragraphs 7 and 15) and the Court (see paragraphs 35-38, 85) that they should be compensated according to the categorisation and value of their land in 2003, and they managed to obtain a favourable decision, accepting their own position, before the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence (see paragraph 17). Furthermore, contrary to the majority ’ s view, it is clear that the applicants did contest that 1961 was the relevant time for assessing the status of the expropriated land and its value, since their very argument about discrimination under Article 14 in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 relied on the fact that the owners of other similar expropriated properties had been awarded higher compensation on the basis of a change in categorisation after expropriation (see paragraphs 19 and 82).

14 . In my view, the applicants ’ complaint under Article 14, read in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, is tenable and I would have proceeded to examine it. If I were to find a violation of this Article in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, the amount I would award the applicants for non-pecuniary damage would be higher than the EUR 9,000 which the present judgment awards; but being in the minority there is no need for me to estimate the amount.

15 . Lastly, a finding of a violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 would have constituted a further ground in support of assessing the applicants ’ land at 2003 values, as the domestic courts did in similar cases. Such additional violation would further illustrate the gravity of the mistreatment sustained by the applicants at the hands of the national authorities.

APPENDIX

No.

Applicant ’ s Name

Birth year

Nationality

Place of residence

1

Nikolina SCERRI

1936

Maltese

Ħ al Safi

2

Joseph SCERRI

1972

Maltese

Å» urrieq

3

Mario SCERRI

1977

Maltese

Si Ä¡ Ä¡ iewi

4

Raphael SCERRI

1968

Maltese

Qrendi

[1] See Coke, Littleton, 148 and Digest 50, 17, 134. See on these maxims and similar maxims in F.A.R. Bennion , Bennion on Statutory Interpretation: a Code , 5 th edn ., London, 2008, section 349, at p. 1141. See similar maxims, namely, commodum ex injuria sua nemo habere debet and injuria propria non cadet in beneficium facientis in Seymour S. Peloubet , A Collection of Legal Maxims in Law and Equity, with English translations, New York, 1884, repr . Colorado, 1985, no. 256 (at p. 31) and no. 983 (at p. 121), respectively.

[2] See Rudolf Bernhardt “ Evolutive Treaty Interpretation, Especially of the European Convention on Human Rights” ( German Yearbook of International Law , vol. 42 (1999), 11 at p. 14. On the principle in dubio in favorem pro libertatae , see, inter alia, §§ 44-45 of my partly dissenting opinion in Simeonovi v. Bulgaria [GC], no. 21980/04, 12 May 2017; § 19 of my partly dissenting opinion in Khlaifia and Others v. Italy, [GC], no. 16483/12, 15 December 2016; § 31 of my concurr ing opinion in Merabishvili v. Georgia [GC], no. 72508/13, 28 November 2017; and §§ 40-43 of my concurring opinion joined by Judge Dedov in Obote v. Russia, no. 58954/09, 19 November 2019.

[3] On this principle, see, inter alia, Case “relating to certain aspects of the laws on the use of languages in education in Belgium” (merits), 23 July 1968, pp. 24, 26, Series A no. 6 , and Mamatkulov and Askarov v. Turkey [GC] , nos. 46827/99 and 46951/99, § 123, ECHR 2005-I; see also Daniel Rietiker, “The principle of ‘effectiveness’ in the recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights: its different dimensions and its consistency with public international law – no need for the concept of treaty sui generis ”, Nordic Journal of International Law , 79 (2010), pp. 245 et seq . ; Georgios A. Serghides , “The Principle of Effectiveness in the European Convention on Human Rights, in Particular its Relationship to the Other Convention Principles”, in (2017), 30, Hague Yearbook of International Law , 1 et seq.; Georgios A. Serghides , “The Principle of Effectiveness as Used in Interpreting, Applying and Implementing the European Convention on Human Rights (its Nature, Mechanism and Significance), in Iulia Motoc, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque and Krzysztof Wojtyczek , New Developments in Constitutional Law – Essays in Honour of András Sajó , The Hague, 2018, pp. 389 et seq. See also a pertinent and recent collection of relevant works prepared by Daniel Rietiker, “Effectiveness and Evolution in Treaty Interpretation”, Oxford Bibliographies (last modified 25 September 2019): https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199796953/obo-9780199796953-0188.xml