Published on 29 January 2024
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 16077/23
INTERZERO D.O.O.
against Slovenia
lodged on 12 April 2023
communicated on 11 January 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application was lodged by a waste management company and concerns its obligation to manage and dispose of additional waste (outside of its contractual obligations). The extent of such obligation was determined on a yearly basis by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (“the Ministry”) through its website announcements. Following the administrative order of 28 February 2014, the applicant company disposed of additional amount of waste free of charge in line with the website announcement concerning the year 2013. The applicant company then lodged an action against the State claiming damages in the amount of 184,706 euros. It alleged that it had been obliged to manage and dispose of the additional waste based on the website announcement which lacked proper legal basis, as previously established in separate sets of proceedings before the Administrative Court. Following the dismissal of its action and the subsequent appeal, the second‑instance court held that despite the fact that the governmental regulations underpinning the obligation to manage and dispose of additional waste lacked legal basis, this shortcoming was not such as to engage the State’s civil liability. The applicant company unsuccessfully challenged that decision before the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court. The applicant company received the Constitutional Court’s decision dismissing its constitutional complaint on 12 December 2022.
The applicant company complains, in substance under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, about the obligation to manage and dispose of additional waste at its own expense without there being proper legal basis for such obligation. The applicant company further complains, under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 in conjunction with Article 13 of the Convention, that the right to obtain compensation for unlawful State acts has turned out to be merely theoretical in the present case because of the requirement to prove that the State acted with “qualified unlawfulness”; a standard that is for the claimant allegedly nearly impossible to satisfy in practice.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been an interference with the applicant company’s peaceful enjoyment of possessions, within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1? If so, has the interference been justified under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1? In particular, did that interference impose an excessive individual burden on the applicant company (see Immobiliare Saffi v. Italy [GC], no. 22774/93, § 59, ECHR 1999-V)?
2. Did the applicant company have at its disposal an effective domestic remedy for the alleged breach of its right under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, as required by Article 13 of the Convention?