Communicated on 13 March 2020
Published on 11 May 2020
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 9051/18
Pavlinka Paneva BOZHILOVA and Krasimir Bozhidarov BOZHILOV
against Bulgaria
lodged on 14 February 2018
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the delayed provision of compensation to the applicants for property of a predecessor of theirs which was expropriated by the municipal authorities in Sofia in 1985 for urban development. The applicants were due a flat in a building the authorities intended to construct. The building was however never completed, and the company tasked to carry out the construction works went bankrupt. In 2013 the applicants brought proceedings against the municipality, claiming the market value of the flat due to them, but their claim was found to be inadmissible. No compensation had yet been provided to them by the time of the lodging of the application. The applicants complain under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and Article 13 of the Convention.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Was the compensation procedure in the case excessively lengthy, and has this resulted in a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (see Kirilova and Others v. Bulgaria, nos. 42908/98 and 3 others, 9 June 2005; Lazarov v. Bulgaria, no. 21352/02, 22 May 2008; Rashkova and Simeonska v. Bulgaria [Committee], no. 41090/12, 2 February 2017)? Did the applicants have at their disposal an effective domestic remedy for their complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, as required by Article 13 of the Convention?
To what extent were the delays in the procedure imputable to the authorities? In particular, could the applicants bring about the conclusion of the procedure on an earlier date, by requesting to receive another property in compensation, in accordance with section 103(5) of the Territorial and Urban Planning Act, or financial compensation, as entitled to after 2001 on the strength of section 9(1) of the transitional provisions of the Territorial Planning Act (see Velyov and Dimitrov v. Bulgaria (dec.) [Committee], no. 64570/10, §§ 27-31, 20 September 2016, and Petrovi v. Bulgaria [Committee], no. 26759/12, §§ 25-29, 2 February 2017)? In that connection, at what point of time did the applicants become aware that the flat due to them would never be constructed?
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