4.  The applicant was born in 1944 and lives in Sofia.
5.  The applicant’s father owned a house with a yard in Sofia, which were expropriated by a decision of the mayor of 16 April 1987 with a view to constructing embassy buildings. The decision, based on section 98 (1) of the Territorial and Urban Planning Act of 1973 (Закон за териториалното и селищно устройство – “the TUPA”), stated that the applicant’s father was to be compensated with a two-room flat and the applicant was to be compensated with another, three-room, flat.
6.  By a supplementary decision of 15 April 1988, based on section 100 of the TUPA, the mayor determined the exact location, size and other details in respect of the future flats to be offered in compensation. The flats were to be situated in a building which had to be constructed by the Bureau for Servicing the Diplomatic Corps (“the BSDC”). The one to be provided to the applicant’s father measured 64.26 square metres.
7.  In 1987 the applicant’s parents and the applicant and his family were settled in a two-room municipally-owned flat.
8.  In 1991 the plans for the construction of the building where the future flats offered in compensation were to be located were cancelled.
9.  The expropriated house was pulled down and the construction works on the plot of land started on an unspecified date.
10.  In February 1996 the applicant’s father passed away.
11.  By a decision of the mayor of 10 July 1996 the applicant was allocated another flat, with a surface which was about 28 square metres bigger than the surface of the flat originally offered in compensation to him. He was not required to pay an additional amount for the bigger flat. On an unspecified date in 1996 the applicant and his family moved in that dwelling, and his mother continued occupying the municipally-owned flat.
12.  In the years that followed the applicant filed numerous requests with the authorities, asking them to find a suitable two-room flat to be provided to him and his mother in lieu of the one which had initially been due. On several occasions before 2001 the BSDC proposed flats but the applicant and his mother turned them down, either because they were not in the vicinity of the expropriated property or because they were not self-contained dwellings.
13.  On 10 June 2004 the applicant requested that the mayor of Sofia offer as compensation one of the several flats in the vicinity of the expropriated property managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, successor to the BSDC. The request was made in accordance with section 103 (5) of the TUPA providing for the so-called re-compensation (преобезщетяване). As no response followed, the applicant lodged an appeal against the mayor’s tacit refusal. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also participated in the proceedings. In a final judgment of 9 April 2008 the Supreme Administrative Court quashed the tacit refusal and remitted the case back to the mayor for examination of the request. It held that it was the duty of the mayor, and not of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to provide a flat to the heirs of the applicant’s father.
14.  It appears that even after that judgment the mayor never took a decision on the applicant’s request for re-compensation.
15.  In the meantime, the applicant’s mother was evicted from the municipally-owned flat she had been occupying. In 2007 she died, whereupon the applicant became the sole owner of the future flat allocated in compensation to his father for the 1987 expropriation.
16.  In 2014, after the present application’s communication to the Government, the applicant was requested to file once again with the Sofia mayor a formal re-compensation request. He did so on 4 August 2014. It is unclear whether any decision on the matter has been taken after that.