Information Note on the Court’s case-law 99
July 2007
Kozacıoğlu v. Turkey - 2334/03
Judgment 31.7.2007 [Section II]
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1
Deprivation of property
Failure to take into account historic value of a building in calculation of compensation due for its expropriation: violation
[This case was referred to the Grand Chamber on 31 March 2008]
Facts: The applicant’s two-storey freestone building was expropriated by the Ministry of Culture, as a listed cultural asset. As the compensation paid to the applicant did not take the building’s historical value into account, the applicant applied for additional compensation.
According to two panels of experts on architecture, construction and real estate, the architectural, historical and cultural characteristics of the building doubled its value. An increase in the amount of compensation paid was nevertheless ruled out, as the Cultural and Natural Heritage Protection Act of 1983 excluded the architectural and historical characteristics or the rareness of the property from the criteria used to calculate the expropriation value.
Law: The expropriation had pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the country’s cultural heritage. The historical value of the expropriated building had not been taken into account in calculating the compensation payable, either when the compensation for expropriation had been determined or during the proceedings concerning increased compensation. Experts had attested that the applicant could have obtained a much higher price if the historical value of the building had been taken into account in the evaluation. The complete failure to allow for the historical value of the property in calculating the compensation had deprived the applicant of the value attributable to certain features of the expropriated property and had failed to strike the requisite “fair balance”.
Practice in several Council of Europe member states showed that the possibility of taking the intrinsic value of certain aspects of an expropriated property into account could not be ruled out altogether when calculating rightful compensation. Various international instruments stressed the need to weigh the public interest in protecting the cultural heritage against the need to protect people’s ownership rights. That being so, a sum reasonably reflecting the cultural characteristics of the expropriated property should be fixed in order to satisfy the requirement of proportionality between the interference with the right to property and the public-interest aim pursued.
Conclusion: violation (four votes to three).
Article 41 – EUR 75,000 for pecuniary damage; finding of a violation sufficient for non-pecuniary damage.
Concerning expropriations pursuing the legitimate aim of protecting a country’s cultural heritage, cf., mutatis mutandis, Beyeler v. Italy [GC], no. 33202/96, § 112, ECHR 2000‑I, Information Note no. 14, SCEA Ferme de Fresnoy v. France (dec.), no. 61093/00, ECHR 2005, Information Note no. 81 and Debelianovi v. Bulgaria, no. 61951/00, § 54, 29 March 2007, Information Note no. 95.
See also Longobardi and Perinelli v. Italy regarding the need to protect the cultural and architectural heritage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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