Background
The 56 applicants, all Roma and including 14 minors at the relevant time, lived in an informal settlement on municipally owned land in Sofia’s Orlandovtsi neighborhood. Roma families had lived at the site since the 1950s. In 2023, municipal authorities initiated proceedings to remove buildings there as unlawful construction, but treated their owners and occupants as unknown and did not formally involve the applicants in the process.
Although the residents and their lawyers repeatedly sought information and attempted to stop the demolition through injunction applications and judicial-review proceedings, they did not obtain copies of the demolition orders until enforcement was already under way. On 9 and 10 August 2023, the municipality demolished homes occupied by 33 applicants; another applicant’s home was demolished later. Several structures remained wholly or partly standing, in part following interim measures indicated by the European Court of Human Rights.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously held that Bulgaria violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The demolition interfered with the applicants’ right to respect for their homes, and the authorities had neither enabled their meaningful participation nor assessed whether demolition was proportionate in light of their individual circumstances. The formal process appeared deliberately structured to exclude the residents from procedural safeguards, while the authorities concealed their intention to proceed despite the applicants’ persistent inquiries.
The Court emphasized that the applicants belonged to a socially disadvantaged group and to a community with a long history at the settlement. No available procedure allowed them, before demolition, to obtain a proper proportionality review. Mr Stoyan Mladenov and Ms Zvezda Mladenova retained victim status even though their home remained standing because it was covered by a demolition order and remained at risk. The Court found no separate issue under Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8 and declined or found it unnecessary to examine several other complaints.
Under Article 46, the Court required Bulgaria to ensure that people facing loss of their homes through demolition can obtain an effective, individualized proportionality review even when they lack formal entitlement to occupy the buildings and are not named as addressees of the demolition orders. It awarded each applicant EUR 10,000 for non-pecuniary damage and awarded the applicants jointly EUR 18,033 for costs and expenses.
Key Takeaways
- Authorities may not evade Article 8 safeguards by directing demolition orders elsewhere while excluding the people who actually live in the affected buildings.
- Before a home is demolished, affected residents must have effective access to an individualized review of whether the measure is proportionate.
- Long-standing community ties and the vulnerability of a socially disadvantaged Roma community are relevant to the proportionality assessment, even where the buildings are unlawful and the residents lack formal occupancy rights.
Why It Matters
The judgment reinforces that enforcement of planning and building law does not displace the Convention’s protection of the home. Governments must build meaningful notice, participation, and pre-demolition proportionality review into procedures affecting actual occupants, including informal residents who are not formally named in administrative orders.
The Article 46 direction gives the ruling significance beyond the individual applicants: Bulgaria must address the procedural gap that allowed demolition to proceed without effective review of the occupants’ circumstances.