OÜ PAREM KALLAS v. ESTONIA

ECLIECLI:CE:ECHR:2022:0705DEC005600219
CounselJÕKS A.
Date05 July 2022
Application Number56002/19
CourtThird Section Committee (European Court of Human Rights)
Respondent StateEstonia
Applied Rules6;6-1;35;P1-1

THIRD SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 56002/19
OÜ PAREM KALLAS
against Estonia

The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 5 July 2022 as a Committee composed of:

Georgios A. Serghides, President,
Anja Seibert-Fohr,
Peeter Roosma, judges,
and Olga Chernishova, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 56002/19) against the Republic of Estonia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 21 October 2019 by OÜ Parem Kallas, a private limited company based in Pärnu (“the applicant company”), which was represented before the Court by Mr A. Jõks, a lawyer practising in Tallinn;

the decision to give notice of the application to the Estonian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Kuurberg, Representative of Estonia to the European Court of Human Rights;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The case concerns the delay in determining the amount of compensation for the expropriation of the applicant’s land and the adequacy of that amount.

2. In spring 2002 the applicant company became the owner of a plot of land in Pärnu, part of which the local municipality had designated for public use (expansion of a street) in 2001. Under section 30(5) of the Planning and Construction Act (planeerimis- ja ehitusseadus), as in force at the material time, the local municipality was under an obligation to expropriate the part of the land designated for public use in return for immediate and fair compensation at the owner’s request. The applicant company submitted a request to that effect to the municipality in 2002, repeated its request in 2004 and initiated judicial proceedings thereafter.

3. In 2006 the domestic courts ordered the municipality to expropriate the land in question; those proceedings were followed by alternating administrative and court proceedings (hereinafter “the expropriation and compensation proceedings”). Between 2006 and 2015 the municipality gave four separate expropriation decisions indicating different amounts of compensation, which had been calculated on the basis of expert opinions, following guidelines given by the courts. The municipality itself declared one of those decisions void and the other three were set aside by the courts. Eventually, in 2019 the domestic courts upheld a decision adopted in 2017 to expropriate the plot in return for the sum of 30,000 euros (EUR). In doing so, the courts noted that the amount payable for the land had been determined on the basis of an adequate and reliable expert opinion, which was in accordance with the guidelines given by the courts, and that the expropriation decision had been sufficiently reasoned.

4. At the time the parties submitted their...

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