Information Note on the Court’s case-law 107
April 2008
Hutten-Czapska v. Poland (friendly settlement) [GC] - 35014/97
Judgment 28.4.2008 [GC]
Article 37
Article 37-1-b
Matter resolved
Friendly settlement providing for both individual and general measures in pilot-judgment case: struck out
Facts
(a) Background: The applicant was one of an estimated 100,000 landlords in Poland who have been affected by a restrictive system of rent control. Under the former communist regime in Poland the State was given wide powers to administer properties and allocate housing, including power to grant residential leases over privately owned property. Although legislation was introduced in 1994 (and amended in 2001 and 2005) with a view to abolishing that system, rent control was maintained in respect of sitting residential tenants in order to protect them during the transition towards a free-market housing system. The legislation also imposed onerous maintenance obligations on landlords and afforded tenants paying controlled rent substantial security of tenure. The applicant’s property, which at the time belonged to her parents, was taken under State management in 1946. After repeated attempts by both her and her parents to recover possession had failed, the applicant lodged a complaint with the European Court. In a judgment of 19 June 2006 (see Information Note no. 87), the Grand Chamber found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention on account of the applicant’s inability to use the property or charge an adequate rent and awarded her EUR 30,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. The Court also considered the violation to be part of the systemic malfunctioning of the Polish housing legislation and directed the State to secure in its domestic legal order a mechanism maintaining a fair balance between the interests of the landlords and the general interest of the community. It reserved the question of pecuniary damage and stipulated that that issue was to be resolved by reference not only to any agreement made between the parties but also in the light of the individual and general measures taken in execution of the Court’s judgment.
(b) Friendly settlement: In February 2008 the parties signed a friendly settlement under the terms of which the Government were to pay the applicant 240,000 Polish zlotys (PLN) for pecuniary damage. The Government identified various general measures that had been taken to resolve the underlying housing problem, including a scheme for State backing for investment in social housing, the creation of conditions enabling landlords to receive market-related rent, and the introduction of a mechanism for the monitoring of rent levels to ensure the transparency of rent increases. They also undertook to implement further measures relating to funding for the renovation and/or thermo-modernisation of tenement buildings and to the promotion of investment in housing, and formally recognised their obligation to afford redress to other people in a similar predicament to the applicant.
Law: The Court could strike an application out of its list only if it was satisfied that the solution arrived at between the parties was based on “respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto”. Since the applicant’s case had been examined under the pilot-judgment procedure, it also had to examine the general measures that needed to be taken in the interest of other potentially affected property owners. It was accepted that the proposed friendly settlement addressed the general as well as the individual aspects of the finding of a violation made in the principal judgment. A number of general remedial measures had been taken or were planned by the Government. These took into account both the Court’s principal judgment and the judgments of the Polish Constitutional Court declaring certain provisions of the existing legislation unconstitutional. Defective provisions had been repealed and new legislation introduced that enabled landlords to charge higher rents, rent levels to be monitored and subsidies to be obtained for housing projects. Further legislation was pending, including a Bill offering a system of subsidies for maintenance and renovation works. In two combined measures that were evidently designed to remove the effects of the remaining restrictions on the termination of leases and the eviction of tenants, steps had been taken to provide social accommodation and to render the authorities more accountable to any landlords who sustained damage as a result of a failure to make such accommodation available to protected tenants. The Government had likewise recognised their obligation to make redress available to other persons adversely affected by the rent-control legislation through a special scheme of compensatory refunds they would be proposing. While noting that it was for the Committee of Ministers, as the body responsible for supervising the execution of the judgment, to evaluate the general measures adopted by the State, the Court stated that, in exercising its own competence to decide whether or not to strike the case out of its list following the friendly settlement, it would take into account the active commitment that had been demonstrated by the Government to take measures aimed at resolving the systemic problem and rely on the actual and promised remedial action as a positive factor going to the issue of “respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto”. Accordingly, having regard to both the general measures for addressing the systemic problem that had been identified and the individual measures afforded to the applicant under the agreement, the Court was satisfied that the settlement was based on respect for human rights.
Conclusion: striking out (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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