CASE OF ALPINIA S.R.L. v. THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

FIFTH SECTION

CASE OF ALPINIA S.R.L. v. THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

(Application no. 28230/12)

JUDGMENT
 

STRASBOURG

27 November 2025

This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.

In the case of Alpinia S.R.L. v. the Republic of Moldova,

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:

 Andreas Zünd, President,
 Mykola Gnatovskyy,
 Vahe Grigoryan, judges,
and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 28230/12) against the Republic of Moldova lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 17 April 2012 by Alpinia S.R.L. (“the applicant company”), registered in the Republic of Moldova, which was represented by Ms I. Soțchi, a lawyer practising in Chișinău;

the decision to give notice of the application to the Moldovan Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Mr D. Obadă;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated in private on 6 November 2025,

Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1.  The application concerns a civil-law dispute between the applicant company and another private company (F.) concerning the right to exploit a sand quarry. The domestic courts upheld an allegedly time-barred action lodged by F. contesting an administrative decision which gave the right to the applicant company to use the quarry. As a result of the outcome of those proceedings, the applicant company eventually lost the right to use the quarry. The applicant company complained under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that the proceedings had not been fair and that, as a result, its rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 had also been breached.

2.  On the basis of two contracts of 30 August 2006 and 9 January 2007, Mr Anatol Sîrghi, the founder of the applicant company, became the owner of 3.03 hectares of land on the outskirts of Costiuleni village. On 12 October 2006 the applicant company was allowed by the Costiuleni local council to carry out a geological exploration of that land, further approved on 9 October 2006 by the State Agency for Geology. It subsequently paid the Hydrological Expedition of Moldova to carry out the exploratory work, which resulted in a recommendation to open an investigational sand quarry.

3.  On 26 December 2007 the State Commission for Reserves and Useful Mineral Substances (“the Commission”) adopted record no. 113 (“the 2007 decision”), found that the applicant company had carried out the required technical research work and approved the Costiuleni sand deposit as exploitable, with reserves of 118,400 cubic metres of sand. Following the adoption of a number of additional acts, on 16 June 2010 the applicant company signed a contract with the Ministry of the Environment, according to which the applicant company was permitted to exploit the Costiuleni sector, with the right to extract sand and to use it as it saw fit, after paying the relevant taxes.

4.  On 30 November 2010 the company F. asked the Commission to annul the 2007 decision, but its request was rejected. On 16 December 2010 the company F. brought a court action against the Commission, designating the applicant company as an accessory party. It asked that the 2007 decision be annulled as unlawful. During the proceedings, the applicant company argued, inter alia, that the court action was time-barred. It submitted evidence that the company F. had known of the 2007 decision since April 2009, when it had been examined within another set of court proceedings between the company F. and the applicant company. In that connection, the applicant company annexed copies of judgments, adopted on 3 August 2009 and 28 December 2009, in proceedings in which the company F. had participated and which mentioned the 2007 decision as part of the evidence examined in court. The company F.’s court action was lodged only in December 2010, outside the thirty-day statutory time-limit.

5.  On 25 May 2011 the Chișinău Court of Appeal annulled the 2007 decision. In response to the argument that the court action had been time-barred, the court noted that no evidence had been adduced that the company F. had been informed of the adoption of the relevant act.

6.  In an appeal against that decision, the applicant company argued, inter alia, that the court action had been time-barred. It again annexed copies of the two 2009 judgments and noted that they had been submitted to the first-instance court in support of the argument that the prescription period had expired. On 21 December 2011 the Supreme Court of Justice upheld the lower court’s judgment. In respect of the argument that the court action had been time-barred, the court found that the expiry of the prescription period could be relied on only by the party in whose favour it ran. Since the Commission had not relied on the expiry of the prescription period and had examined the merits of the complaint, it had reinstated the company F.’s procedural right to challenge the 2007 decision.

7.  As a result of the 2011 judgments mentioned above, the applicant company eventually lost its right to exploit the sand quarry.

Relevant domestic legislation

8.  In accordance with Article 271 of the Civil Code, a court action for the protection of a right may be rejected on the basis of expiry of the limitation period only where the party in whose favour the limitation period runs has submitted a relevant request before the end of the hearing concerning the merits of the case.

Under the Law on administrative proceedings (no. 793-XIV of 10 February 2000, section 14 – Preliminary request, as in force at the time of the events), a person who considered that his or her right had been breached by an administrative act could, within thirty days of the date of becoming aware of the act, request from the issuing authority its partial or total revocation. Under section 17 of the same Law, a court action for the annulment of an administrative act could be brought within thirty days from the date of receiving an answer to the preliminary request, or from the expiry of the time-limit for receiving such an answer, or from the date when the administrative act became known to the person concerned. The thirty-day time-limit is a prescription period.

9.  In accordance with Article 67 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as in force at the relevant time, an accessory intervener was a party whose rights might be affected by proceedings between other parties and who intervened alongside the plaintiff or the defendant. Under Article 68 of the same Code, the accessory intervener had all the rights of the party alongside which he or she intervened, except for the right to modify the grounds of or object to the court action, to withdraw or settle the case, to bring a counter-action or to request the enforcement of the decision delivered.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

10.  The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention or inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.

11.  The general principles concerning the observance of admissibility requirements for carrying out procedural acts as an important aspect of the right to a fair trial, with particular importance placed on the role of the limitation period, when interpreted in the light of the Preamble to the Convention, which, in its relevant part, declares the rule of law to be part of the common heritage of the Contracting States, have been summarised in Dacia S.R.L. v. Moldova (no. 3052/04, § 75, 18 March 2008) and Grafescolo S.R.L. v. the Republic of Moldova (no. 36157/08, §§ 23-24, 22 July 2014).

12.  In the present case, the Government argued, as did the Supreme Court of Justice, that since the authority which had issued the 2007 decision had not relied on the thirty-day prescription period for appealing against it in court, that prescription period was inapplicable to the case. In support of their position, they submitted two similar examples of Supreme Court of Justice case-law and submitted that the company F. had lodged its court action within thirty days from receiving the Commission’s answer in November 2010.

13.  The Court notes that the applicant company was involved in the proceedings started by the company F. for the annulment of the 2007 decision. Had those proceedings not directly affected its rights, it would not have had any standing in the proceedings and the courts would not have allowed it to make any submissions. However, the applicant company was allowed to intervene as an accessory and the courts examined – and reacted to – its submissions. As an accessory intervener, the applicant company had almost all the same rights as the defendant alongside which it appeared (see paragraph 9 above). The 2007 decision was adopted in response to the applicant company’s request and was in its favour, recognising its role in the development of the quarry and authorising the exploitation of the sand quarry. Therefore, regardless of whether the thirty-day limitation period for appealing against the 2007 decision could also be considered to run in favour of the Commission, it clearly ran in the applicant company’s favour. The two examples of case-law submitted by the Government did not concern situations in which the authority which had adopted the administrative act had failed to rely on the expiry of the prescription period, but an accessory intervener in whose favour the prescription period also ran had in fact properly relied on it.

14.  The applicant company relied on the argument that the prescription period had expired, as provided for by law, in the proceedings before the first-instance court. It also submitted to the courts two judgments in which the examination of the 2007 decision proved that the company F. had been in possession of the decision since 2009 (see paragraph 4 above). Accordingly, the company F. was required to challenge that decision before the issuing authority within thirty days of becoming aware of its content, but actually did so only in November 2010. Moreover, the company F. never asked for the limitation period to be extended in its case and did not submit any reasons for such extension. For their part, the domestic courts did not formally extend the limitation period in the company F.’s favour. The conclusion reached by the Supreme Court of Justice that, by failing to rely on the expiry of the prescription period and examining the substance of the company F.’s complaint, the Commission had effectively extended the time-limit for lodging the court action does not explain how this could also extend the time-limit in respect of complaints affecting the applicant company’s rights, which did properly rely on the expiry of the prescription period.

15.  The Court notes that in the above context the issue whether the court action was time-barred was an important argument raised by the applicant company during the proceedings. If accepted, it could have led to the dismissal of the action brought by the local council against the applicant company. However, the domestic courts did not give a convincing reply to that argument, referring in essence to the effects of the actions of the Commission and not to those of the applicant company’s actions.

16.  There has accordingly been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.

17.  The applicant company further complained that its rights guaranteed by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention had been breached.

18.  The relevant part of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention reads:

“Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. ...”

19.  The Court has found a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention as a result of the failure of the domestic courts to properly examine an important argument raised by the applicant. It cannot, however, speculate as to the outcome of the proceedings had they been fair under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. It therefore considers that this complaint is inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded, pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention (see Grafescolo S.R.L., cited above, § 27).

APPLICATION OF ARTICLE 41 OF THE CONVENTION

20.  The applicant company claimed restitutio in integrum, which in this case meant restoring its right to exploit the relevant sand quarry. It also claimed 99,036,000 Moldovan lei (MDL, equivalent to 969,566 euros (EUR)) in respect of pecuniary damage and EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

21.  The Government considered that the sums claimed were unsubstantiated and excessive, referring to Tegulum S.A. v. the Republic of Moldova (no. 53982/11, § 44, 1 February 2022), in which the Court had awarded EUR 5,000 in respect of the non-pecuniary damage caused.

22.  The Court does not discern any causal link between the violation found and the pecuniary damage alleged; it therefore rejects this claim. On the other hand, it awards the applicant company EUR 5,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT, UNANIMOUSLY,

(a)  that the respondent State is to pay the applicant company, within three months, EUR 5,000 (five thousand euros) in respect of non-pecuniary damage, to be converted into Moldovan lei at the rate applicable at the date of settlement;

(b)  that from the expiry of the above-mentioned three months until settlement simple interest shall be payable on the above amount at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points;

Done in English, and notified in writing on 27 November 2025, pursuant to Rule 77 §§ 2 and 3 of the Rules of Court.

 Martina Keller Andreas Zünd
 Deputy Registrar President