SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 24535/20
Greta BARTOLO PARNIS
against Malta
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 3 October 2023 as a Committee composed of:
Pauliine Koskelo, President,
Lorraine Schembri Orland,
Davor Derenčinović, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 24535/20) against the Republic of Malta lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 12 June 2020 by a Maltese national, Ms Greta Bartolo Parnis, who was born in 1965 and lives in Pembroke (“the applicant”) and who was represented by Dr P.M. Magri, a lawyer practising in Valletta;
the decision to give notice of the complaints concerning the period of 2007 onwards, under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention alone and in conjunction with Article 13 of the Convention to the Maltese Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agents, Dr C. Soler, State Advocate, and Dr J. Vella, Advocate at the Office of the State Advocate, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns the same factual and legal domestic situation as in Bartolo Parnis and Others v. Malta ((dec.), nos. 49378/19 and 3 others, 24 March 2020) and the subsequent judgment Bartolo Parnis and Others v. Malta (nos. 49378/18 and 3 others, 7 October 2021), but a different set of domestic proceedings in respect of another apartment owned by the applicant and not covered by the previous proceedings at issue in the above case. Following proceedings instituted in 2015, by a judgment of 29 November 2019, the Constitutional Court, finding a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, in part, awarded the applicant 38,000 euros (EUR) (an increase from the EUR 20,000 awarded by the first-instance court) in compensation in relation to the violation, as of 2007, of her property rights on apartment 29 C (whose annual market rental value was estimated at EUR 4,200).
2. The applicant complained under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention and Article 13 of the Convention that the violation of her property rights was not brought to an end as there had been no order to evict the tenants and that she was not adequately compensated for the breach, given the low amount of compensation awarded in view of the value of the property. She specifies that she is not complaining about the application of Article 12B of the Housing (Decontrol) Ordinance, Chapter 158 of the Laws of Malta, introduced in 2018.
THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT
3. The applicant complained under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that she is still a victim of the violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 upheld by the domestic court.
4. The Court refers to its general principles concerning victim status and its established case‑law in cases similar to the present one (see, among many other authorities, Apap Bologna v. Malta, no. 46931/12, §§ 41, 43, 48 and 82, 30 August 2016).
5. In the present case the courts of constitutional competence found a violation of the applicant’s property rights, for the period following 2007, and thus expressly acknowledged the violation. The Constitutional Court increased the compensation granted at first instance, awarding EUR 38,000 in pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. Bearing in mind the Court’s practice in awarding compensation (see Cauchi v. Malta, no. 14013/19, §§ 102‑07, 25 March 2021) the Court considers that an adequate amount of compensation was awarded to the applicant (compare Bartolo Parnis (dec.), cited above, § 48) for the violation until 2019. In actual fact, and distinguishing from the other cases concerning the applicant and her family decided by the Court (ibid., and Anastasi and Others v. Malta [Committee], no. 49102/19 and two others, § 9, 29 September 2022), applying the Court’s standards as set out for example in Cauchi (cited above, §§ 102‑107) the award in respect of this apartment is significantly higher than that which the Court would have awarded and could be considered to have covered an even longer period (compare Darmanin v. Malta (dec.) [Committee], no. 56311/19, § 17, 19 October 2021).
6. The Court also reiterates that in the event that a higher future rent is put in place eviction would not always be necessary. Indeed, when the rent control measure in question did pursue a legitimate aim (such as the social protection of needy tenants), the adaptation of the future rent to present circumstances might be sufficient to repair the existing disproportionate burden borne by the owners of property subject to rent control and thus bring the violation to an end (see Portanier v. Malta, no. 55747/16, § 48, 27 August 2019). Thus, while it is true that the Constitutional Court had not ordered the eviction of the tenants or alternatively put in place a higher future rent to bring the violation to an end (see Cauchi, cited above, § 30, and Marshall and Others v. Malta, no. 79177/16, §§ 71-72, 11 February 2020), in the present case the Constitutional Court judgment was delivered after the entry into force, on 1 August 2018, of the 2018 amendments introducing section 12B of the Ordinance (contrast, Bartolo Parnis and Others, judgment cited above, where the Constitutional Court judgments had been delivered in April 2018, prior to the amendments). Under the Ordinance as amended (also in 2021), a new potentially effective procedure capable of evicting the tenant or putting in place a higher future rent was open to the applicant following the finding by the Constitutional Court (see Deguara Caruana Gatto and Gera v. Malta (dec.), no. 20064/21, §§ 20-21 and 38, 23 May 2023), a situation which had not necessarily crystalized in 2021, at the time of the Bartolo Parnis and Others judgment (cited above, § 48). The applicant has not informed the Court that she undertook that procedure (contrast Cauchi, cited above, § 20) and was unsatisfied with its outcome, and in the latter case that she instituted constitutional redress proceedings complaining about the matter, quite the contrary as until her observations dated August 2022 she insisted that she was not complaining about the 2018 amendments (see, mutatis mutandis, Spiteri Maempel v. Malta (dec.) [Committee], no. 26917/21, § 11, 6 September 2022). In such circumstances, and given her inactivity after the Constitutional Court judgment, the Court cannot find a priori that the applicant is still a victim of the violation upheld by the domestic court, years after the Constitutional Court judgment (contrast Cauchi, cited above, § 31, in fine) but rather considers that the applicant has lost her victim status in respect of her complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 brought before the domestic court and subsequently before this Court (ibid., see also Tabone v. Malta (dec.) [Committee], no. 23107/20, §§ 13-17, 28 March 2023 in connection with an applicant’s inactivity).
7. In consequence, the Government’s objection to this effect is upheld. The complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 is therefore incompatible ratione personae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) and must be declared inadmissible in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.
8. The Court reiterates that Article 13 does not apply in the absence of an arguable claim (see Maurice v. France [GC], no. 11810/03, § 106, ECHR 2005‑IX). Bearing in mind the considerations made above in relation to the applicant’s victim status for the purposes of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, it considers that in the specific circumstances of this case, the complaint under Article 13 is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 26 October 2023.
Dorothee von Arnim Pauliine Koskelo
Deputy Registrar President
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy