Background
Greek authorities expropriated the applicants’ land in Amaliada for a highway project in 2008. In 2010, the Amaliada Court of First Instance set provisional compensation using property values at hearings held in October 2009.
The State sought final compensation in October 2010, but the Court of Appeal hearing was adjourned twice at the State’s request and ultimately took place in January 2015. Applying Greek law, the Patras Court of Appeal used the 2015 values and set substantially lower compensation for most plots, citing the fall in property values after 2009. The Court of Cassation dismissed the applicants’ appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously held that Greece violated Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. Although it accepted that Greek law generally used the final-compensation hearing date where more than a year had passed since the provisional-compensation hearing, the delayed hearing in this case upset the required fair balance.
The statutory time limits for determining final compensation had been substantially exceeded, and the State had sought both adjournments. Because property values fell significantly during that State-attributable delay, applying the later valuation date made the applicants bear financial consequences for which they were not responsible. The Court declared inadmissible the separate complaint concerning the presumption that the remaining land would benefit from the highway, because the applicants had not complied with domestic procedural requirements.
Key Takeaways
- A later valuation date may breach property rights where State-attributable delay causes expropriated property values to fall substantially.
- Domestic statutory deadlines for final-compensation proceedings are relevant to the Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 fair-balance assessment.
- The Court awarded each applicant EUR 2,500 for non-pecuniary damage, but rejected pecuniary-loss and costs claims for insufficient substantiation.
Why It Matters
The judgment reinforces that compensation mechanisms for compulsory acquisition must not shift the economic cost of governmental delay onto owners. A valuation rule that is generally legitimate can become disproportionate when the authorities delay the process beyond statutory limits and a market decline follows.
The Court also emphasized that applicants must comply with domestic procedural rules when challenging ancillary expropriation issues, including alleged benefits to land not taken.