FIFTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 32970/12
Marine KRAVISHVILI
against Georgia
The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 4 April 2024 as a Committee composed of:
Carlo Ranzoni, President,
Lado Chanturia,
María Elósegui, judges,
and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 32970/12) against Georgia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 17 May 2012 by a Georgian national, Ms Marine Kravishvili (“the applicant”), who was born in 1957 and lives in Batumi;
the decision to give notice of the complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Georgian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Mr B. Dzamashvili of the Ministry of Justice, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. This case is of the type examined in Eka Mikeladze and Others v. Georgia ([Committee], nos. 29385/11, 19372/12, 29533/13, and 73699/13, 25 November 2021). It is brought under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and concerns the alleged unlawfulness of the revocation of the applicant’s property rights over a plot of land.
2. In particular, by a decision of 22 July 2009, the Khelvachauri Registration Service allocated a plot of land measuring 2,502 sq. m in the village of Mtsvane Kontskhi (Khelvachauri District) to the applicant under the Law on the Recognition of Property Rights to Plots of Land Possessed (Used) by Natural and Legal Persons. The applicant was provided with a property certificate on the basis of which she registered the plot concerned in her name.
3. On 7 October 2010 the Batumi City Hall appealed against the above decision. They claimed that the plot of land allocated to the applicant formed part of the Batumi Botanical Park, and that the applicant’s title was therefore unlawful.
4. On 10 March 2011 the Batumi City Court revoked the Khelvachauri Registration Service’s decision dated 22 July 2009 and cancelled the applicant’s title to the property. The court concluded that the initial decision recognising the applicant’s title had been reached unlawfully since the applicant had failed to submit evidence in support of her claim that she had been lawfully using the plot in question.
5. That decision was upheld by the Kutaisi Court of Appeal on 29 June 2011. On 19 October 2011 the Supreme Court of Georgia rejected an appeal by the applicant on points of law as inadmissible.
6. Before the Court the applicant complained that the revocation of her property rights was in breach of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.
THE COURT’S ASSESMENT
7. The relevant legal framework and practice are summarised in Eka Mikeladze and Others v. Georgia ([Committee], nos. 29385/11, 19372/12, 29533/13, and 73699/13, §§ 30-34, 25 November 2021).
8. The Government submitted that, having been unsuccessful in the administrative proceedings, the applicant should have initiated compensation proceedings with a view to claiming compensation for the loss caused by the administrative authorities. In their letter of 26 October 2021, they added that the applicant had had at her disposal another effective remedy in the form of administrative proceedings, which she had not availed herself of. The applicant argued that she had exhausted all remedies available to her and that the initiation of compensation proceedings would have been futile and unlikely to succeed in view of the domestic courts’ conclusion that the recognition of her property title had been unlawful from the outset.
9. The Court does not consider it necessary to address the Government’s non-exhaustion objection, as the applicant’s complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 of the Convention is in any event inadmissible for the following reason.
10. The Court notes that the domestic courts invalidated the registration of the applicant’s title to the plot of land concerned on the basis of Article 60(1) § 4 of the General Administrative Code, which explicitly provided that “rights-granting” delegated legislation could be declared null and void if it substantially violated the legal rights or interests of a State, the public or others, unless an interested party had “legitimate trust” in such legislation. The Court does not find that the law on which the revocation of the applicant’s title was based was in violation of the requirement of lawfulness under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention (see (see Turex Ltd v. Georgia (dec.) [Committee], no. 22398/10, § 33, 26 February 2019; see also Eka Mikeladze and Others, cited above, § 53). Furthermore, the revocation of the applicant’s title was designed to correct a mistake made by the authorities, which was the express aim of the law. The Court accepts that the disputed decision was therefore taken “in the public interest” and served the legitimate aim of correcting a mistake made by the local administrative authorities (see ibid. at § 54).
11. As to the proportionality of the interference complained about, the Court notes that the public authorities acted promptly and in an appropriate and consistent manner. While an owner should not have to bear the adverse consequences of a mistake committed by a State body without compensation or any other type of reparation (see Tomina and Others v. Russia, nos. 20578/08 and 19 others, § 39, 1 December 2016), the Court cannot but note that the title to the plot of land in issue was initially granted to the applicant for no monetary consideration. Furthermore, the first-instance and appeal courts explicitly invited the applicant to produce evidence in support of her proprietary claim; she failed, however, to do so. In such circumstances, it appears from the case file that the applicant had no valid title to the property in question prior to the decision of 22 July 2009.
12. Noting that the national courts examined the applicant’s main arguments in detail and dismissed them in a consistent and well-reasoned manner (contrast Eka Mikeladze and Others, cited above, §§ 57-58), and also reiterating that it has only limited powers to deal with alleged errors of fact or law made by national courts (see, for instance, Čadek and Others v. the Czech Republic, nos. 31933/08 and 9 others, § 52, 22 November 2012), the Court considers that nothing in the case file discloses a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention in the present case. The application is therefore manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) and must be rejected, pursuant to Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 7 May 2024.
Martina Keller Carlo Ranzoni
Deputy Registrar President