Information Note on the Court’s case-law 200
October 2016
Bagdonavicius and Others v. Russia - 19841/06
Judgment 11.10.2016 [Section III]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for home
Forced eviction of Roma families and destruction of their homes with no offer of alternative accommodation: violation
Facts – The 33 applicants, six of whom have died and one of whom has disappeared, are members of six Roma families who lived in the same village. They complained about their forced eviction and the demolition of their houses, which were several decades old; according to the authorities, no building permits had been granted for their construction.
Law – Article 8: The demolition of the applicants’ houses in execution of judicial decisions amounted to an interference that was in accordance with an accessible, clear and foreseeable law, and was intended to protect the municipality’s right to recuperate the plots of land which were occupied by those houses, which had been constructed without building permits.
The occupation of the plots of land in the village by unauthorised buildings, including the applicants’ homes, had covered a sufficiently long period and dated back to the Soviet period. The applicants had therefore been able to develop sufficiently close ties with the locality and to establish a community life in it.
The domestic courts had ordered the demolition of the applicants’ homes without giving any reasons other than the lack of a building permit and the fact that the land had been occupied unlawfully, and without analysing the proportionality of this measure.
Thus, the possible consequences of demolishing the houses in question and forcibly evicting the applicants had not been taken into account by the domestic courts during or after the judicial proceedings brought by the prosecutor. With regard to the date of and arrangements for the eviction, it had not been shown that the applicants were duly informed about the intervention by the bailiffs in charge of demolishing the houses, or of the practical arrangements for that operation. Equally, the domestic authorities had not conducted a genuine consultation with the applicants about possible rehousing options, on the basis of their needs, prior to their forced eviction.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 7,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; EUR 500 in respect of pecuniary damage.
The Court also concluded, unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 34, since the authorities of the respondent State could not be held to have hindered the applicants in the exercise of their right of individual petition.
(See also Yordanova and Others v. Bulgaria, 25446/06, 24 April 2012, Information Note 151)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy