Last Updated on January 16, 2024 by LawEuro
European Court of Human Rights (Application no. 49066/12)
The case concerns the applicants’ eviction from an apartment after more than eleven years of living there and the alleged failure of the courts to properly weigh the competing interests when ordering their eviction. It also concerns the allegedly divergent case-law of the Supreme Court of Justice concerning the above issue. The applicant complains of a violation of Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention as well as Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.
The parties’ submissions
The applicants submitted that they had moved into their apartment lawfully, on the basis of an occupancy voucher issued by the SIA administration. They had lived there for over eleven years, paying utility bills and rent to the SIA. They had paid significant repair costs for the roof and the heating pipe system, for example. For approximately eight years the Academy had not only tolerated the applicants’ presence in the apartment but had assisted them in obtaining registration of their permanent residence there. Neither the occupancy voucher nor the permanent residence had ever been annulled.
The Government argued that since the applicants had neither any property rights nor a “legitimate expectation” of obtaining any, they had had no right to continue living in the disputed apartment once the employment relationship between the first applicant and the Academy had ceased. Moreover, the authorities had needed to use the housing space, to be used in the public interest. Therefore, the courts had struck a fair balance between the competing interests involved.
The European Court of Human Rights noted the following:
The Court reiterates that the concept of “home” is of central importance to an individual’s identity, self‑determination, physical and mental integrity, maintenance of relationships with others and a settled and secure place in the community. Loss of one’s home is a most extreme form of interference with the right to respect for the home.
The Court further reiterates that, whether the case is analysed in terms of a positive duty on the State or in terms of an interference by a public authority which needs to be justified in accordance with paragraph 2, the applicable principles are broadly similar. In both contexts regard must be had to the fair balance that has to be struck between the competing interests of the individual and of the community as a whole. Furthermore, even in relation to the positive obligations flowing from the first paragraph of Article 8, in striking the required balance the aims mentioned in the second paragraph may be of a certain relevance.
The Court’s task is not to take the place of the domestic authorities in determining the most appropriate way of proceeding in a particular case, but rather to review under the Convention the decisions that the authorities have taken in the exercise of their powers of appreciation.
Application of the above principles to the present case
Whether there has been an interference with the applicants’ right to respect for their home
The Court has consistently held that the concept of “home” within the meaning of Article 8 is not limited to those premises which are lawfully occupied or which have been lawfully established. “Home” is an autonomous concept which does not depend on classification under domestic law. Whether or not a particular premises constitutes a “home” which attracts the protection of Article 8 § 1 will depend on the factual circumstances, namely, the existence of sufficient and continuous links with a specific place.
The Court notes that the Government have not disputed that the applicants had lived in the relevant apartment for almost twelve years and had no other accommodation. Accordingly, the apartment was their “home” within the meaning of Article 8. Moreover, the applicants were evicted from their home following an eviction procedure started in November 2012, which clearly constituted an interference with their right guaranteed under Article 8.
Whether the interference was prescribed by law and pursued a legitimate aim
The Court notes that the Supreme Court of Justice relied on two specific provisions of domestic law. It also referred to Article 46 of the same Code, dealing with the distribution of apartments belonging to the company and organisation housing fund, Article 50 of the Code, dealing with the distribution of apartments in the local public administration housing fund and Article 112 of the Code, dealing with the temporary distribution of rooms in hostels. However, it did not specify which of the rules concerning these types of housing, if any, was applicable in the applicants’ case.
The Court notes that Article 103 of the Housing Code refers to the unauthorised occupation of a dwelling as grounds for evicting its occupants. However, it was never in dispute before the domestic courts that the applicants had moved into the apartment with the authorisation of the SIA administration, which had issued them with an occupancy voucher, as well as supporting them with the registration of their permanent residence in the apartment.
It can also be assumed that the Supreme Court of Justice effectively found that the occupancy voucher issued by the SIA administration in the applicants’ names was null and void. However, Article 51 of the Housing Code provided for a three-year time-limit for annulling an occupancy voucher, a period which had clearly expired in the present case. That provision made an exception to the three-year limitation period in the case of an occupancy voucher issued as a result of unlawful actions on the part of those in whose favour it had been issued. However, the Supreme Court of Justice did not find that the applicants had acted unlawfully, nor was this the subject of the court proceedings. It simply noted that, in the absence of any employment relationship with the SIA, the applicants were occupying the apartment temporarily, on the basis of a rental agreement. The Court further notes that neither the occupancy voucher in the applicants’ name, nor the registration of their permanent residence in the apartment, was annulled.
In such circumstances, it is unclear how Article 103 of the Housing Code could have provided a legal basis for the applicants’ eviction in the absence of any finding that they had acted unlawfully.
At the same time, reiterating that its power to review compliance with domestic law is limited, the Court will not take a definitive view in this respect, but will instead take into account the above findings in its review of the proportionality of the interference with the applicants’ rights.
The interference in question can be regarded as having pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the rights of others, namely those of the Academy and, implicitly, of those of its staff members who had the right to obtain accommodation from the Academy.
Whether the interference was “necessary in a democratic society”
The central question in this case is, therefore whether the interference was proportionate to the aim pursued and thus “necessary in a democratic society”.
The Court recalls its case-law developed in Vrzić, namely that the principle that any person at risk of losing his or her home should be able to have the proportionality of the measure determined by an independent tribunal does not automatically apply in cases where possession is sought by a private individual or enterprise. On the contrary, the balance between the interests of the private individual or enterprise and the residential occupier may be struck by legislation which has the purpose of protecting the Convention rights of the parties concerned. Since the administrator of the apartment in the present case, namely the Academy, was a State institution and administered the building in the State’s name, this case-law is not applicable here. Therefore, since relevant arguments concerning the proportionality of the interference have been raised by the applicants in domestic judicial proceedings, the domestic courts had to examine them in detail and provide adequate reasons.
In this connection the Court again refers to the absence in the domestic courts’ judgments of any finding that the applicants had acted unlawfully. On the contrary, the first applicant had a contract with the SIA and was referred to as a staff member in the letter to the local authority in support of the applicants’ request to register their permanent residence in the apartment; the applicants had moved into the apartment with the agreement of the SIA administration supported by an occupancy voucher, which, under Article 50 of the Housing Code, was the only legal basis for moving into an apartment; the applicants had lived in the apartment for more than eleven years, and had paid utility bills to the administration of the SIA and subsequently the Academy; there is nothing in the file to show that they were ever warned about the temporary nature of their occupancy.
Having found that the applicants had in fact never worked for the SIA, the Supreme Court of Justice established that they were simply renting the apartment and had to move out at the request of the building’s administrator. In this connection, it is noted that from the case-law submitted by the applicants that in two cases decided in 2009 and 2010 the Supreme Court of Justice established that the persons concerned had moved into their apartments on the basis of a rental agreement with the Academy and obtained occupancy vouchers from it. In those two cases the court did not examine the issue whether the persons concerned had ever worked for the Academy, even though in the case no. 2ra-1284/10 it is clear that the Academy argued the absence of any relationship with the person concerned. The fact that the Supreme Court of Justice did not comment on that issue could suggest that it viewed the presence or absence of a work relationship with the Academy as irrelevant to the issue of whether the person had the right to continue residing in the apartment and to obtain an occupancy voucher for it. Despite being presented with this case-law, the same court rejected an identical claim from the applicants in the present case, relying primarily on the fact that the applicants had never worked for the Academy.”
The Court finds that the domestic court gave no consideration to the fact that the applicants had no other place to live and would find themselves on the street after more than a decade of living lawfully in the apartment and not only paying the rent and utility bills, but also paying for substantial repairs which the building’s management had neglected to carry out for years. At the same time, no analysis was made of the competing interests, namely whether and to what extent the Academy needed housing for its staff, whether its other staff had alternative accommodation and whether the Academy had other apartments to offer to its staff. This lack of analysis is even more obvious in the light of the fact that the Supreme Court of Justice was aware of its own decision in a very similar case where it had found in favour of persons making claims virtually identical to those of the applicants. It did not distinguish that case from the present one in any manner but arrived at the opposite solution.
In other words, the Supreme Court of Justice did not weigh up the competing interests at stake, limiting itself to the finding that the building administrator had asked the applicants to leave. Together with the procedural issues mentioned above, namely that the occupancy voucher was not annulled and that the applicants were never found to have acted in an unlawful manner, yet were evicted on the basis of a provision referring to unauthorised occupation of a dwelling, as well as the confusing reference to provisions concerning different types of housing without specifying which provision applied in the present case and the reliance on an element which had previously not influenced the same court’s decisions in two virtually identical situations, these considerations are sufficient to enable the Court to conclude that there has been a breach of Article 8 of the Convention in the present case.
CASE OF NAFORNIȚA v. THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA (European Court of Human Rights) 49066/12. Full text of the document.
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