Published on 15 July 2025
FIRST SECTION
Applications nos. 32702/24 and 34439/24
PORTA ROSSA S.P.A. against Italy
lodged on 25 October 2024
communicated on 27 June 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The applications concern the expropriation of different parcels of the applicant company’s land for the construction of a motorway. Four months before the adoption of the occupation order, the Municipality, in the context of territorial planning, imposed a building restraint for the construction of the motorway, thereby altering the status of the land from constructible to non-constructible.
Upon appeal by the applicant, as regards parcel no. 768 folio 34, the domestic courts determined the compensation for expropriation and occupation taking into account the building restraint on the property, thus calculating it on the basis of the non-constructible nature of the land. In relation to all the other parcels, the Court of Appeal calculated the compensation considering the land as constructible. In 2017, the Court of Cassation annulled the Court of Appeal’s judgments and ordered that the compensation be quantified in accordance with the legal classification of the land, considering the land as non-constructible. The calculation of the compensation in the referral proceeding before the Court of Appeal was carried out on the basis of the non-constructible nature of the land. In 2024 the Court of Cassation declared the applicant’s appeal inadmissible considering that the Court of Appeal had correctly conformed to the principles of law it had indicated.
In the context of both sets of proceedings, the non-constructible nature of the land and the related compensation were recognised by qualifying the imposed constraint as a building restraint (vincolo conformativo), rather than an expropriation-aimed restraint (vincolo espropriativo).
The applicant company complains, under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, of a disproportionate interference with its property rights on account of the qualification of the building restraint and the calculation of the compensation on the basis of the non-constructible nature of the land.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of the applicant company’s right to property contrary to Article 1 of Protocol No. 1? In particular, was the applicant company made to bear a disproportionate and excessive burden on account of the amount of compensation awarded to it (see Scordino v. Italy (no. 1) [GC], no. 36813/97, ECHR 2006 V, and Potomska and Potomski v. Poland, no. 33949/05, § 66, 29 March 2011)?
In replying to the questions, the parties are invited to address the significance attributed to the temporal lapse between the imposition of the constraint and the subsequent expropriation procedure.
The parties are also invited to specify the criteria for qualifying restraints as a building restraint (vincolo conformativo) rather than expropriation-aimed restraint (vincolo espropriativo) and the consequences on the determination of expropriation compensation.