LEGAL ISSUES ON RESTITUTION OF THE PROPERTIES UNDER THE CONVENTION
LEGAL ISSUES ON RESTITUTION OF THE PROPERTIES UNDER THE CONVENTION

Summary/Abstract: Overview The judgments finding a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, in cases of property lost during the communist regime, are therefore related not to the very fact of the nationalisation or confiscation by the authoritarian power, but to the actual failure of the States to comply with their own legislation providing for compensation or restoration of property or with final judicial or administrative decisions restoring property or awarding compensation, rendered by domestic authorities in favor of the applicants, during the period following the ratification of the Convention. These judgments often find, in addition to the violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, a second violation of Article 6 of the Convention (right to fair trial) regarding a number of particular issues, as for example, the excessive delays due to the lack of efficiency of compensatory legislation and proceedings, the breach of the access to court requirement because of the lack of enforcement of final judicial or administrative decisions ordering restitution of lost property or the breach of the principle of legal certainty because of the quashing of final judicial decisions ordering restitution of property.

• Details
• Contents