Published on 20 October 2025
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 20003/23
Veljko HRSHUM
against North Macedonia
lodged on 17 May 2023
communicated on 1 October 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the partial demolition of the applicant’s building (carried out on 23 May 2007) and the subsequent civil proceedings in which the domestic courts, despite having accepted the experts’ findings that the building had complied with the relevant permits, refused to award the applicant compensation for damage.
The applicant’s compensation claim was dismissed by the Supreme Court’s judgment of 10 January 2023, served on the applicant on 10 February 2023. The domestic courts considered that the applicant was not entitled to compensation as the demolition had been carried out on the basis of final administrative acts (dated 8 May 2007) that had not been challenged by him, which meant that he had agreed to the demolition. They did not give weight to his arguments that he had not been properly served with those documents to be able to challenge them, and even had he challenged them, such an appeal would not have had a suspensive effect. The domestic courts concluded that the applicant knew about the demolition order as he had admitted that he had learned about the demolition from the media on the same day and nevertheless had not gone on-site or requested service of the relevant documents.
The applicant complains that the partial demolition of his building and the refusal of the domestic courts to award him compensation for the damage sustained by the demolition violated his property rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of the applicant’s right to property contrary to Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention by the partial demolition of his building and the refusal of the domestic courts to award him compensation for the damage sustained by the demolition (see, for the general principles, Zammit and Vassallo v. Malta, no. 43675/16, §§ 51-53, 28 May 2019, and Khizanishvili and Kandelaki v. Georgia, no. 25601/12, §§ 47-50, 17 December 2019)?