FIRST SECTION
CASE OF MATTEI AND OTHERS v. MALTA
(Application no. 14615/19)
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
17 June 2021
 
 
 
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Mattei and Others v. Malta,
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Krzysztof Wojtyczek, President,
 Erik Wennerström,
 Lorraine Schembri Orland, judges,
and Attila Teplán, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 14615/19) against the Republic of Malta lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by eight Maltese nationals, whose details are indicated in the appended table;
the decision to give notice to the Maltese Government (“the Government”) of the application;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 25 May 2021,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
INTRODUCTION
1. The case concerns the requisition of the applicants’ property and the disproportionality of the rent received by the applicants under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, as well as the effectiveness of the Constitutional Court as a remedy for the purposes of Article 13 in connection with the former complaint. THE FACTS
2. The applicants were born between 1939 and 1945 and live in different cities in Malta (see Appendix). The applicants were represented by Dr S. Grech and Dr I. Refalo, lawyers practising in Valletta. 3. The Government were represented by their Agent, Dr V. Buttigieg, State Advocate, and subsequently by their Agent Dr A. Buhagiar, Acting State Advocate. 4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. Background to the case
5. The applicants are owners of a property, No. 125 Lapsi Street, St. Julian’s, consisting of a corner house with a garden which was requisitioned in 1970, in line with the provisions of the Housing Act, Chapter 125 of the Laws of Malta, at a time when it was not in a good state. 6. Following work to make it habitable, which had not been carried out by the applicants but by the authority and eventually the tenants, on 7 July 1981 it was allocated to couple C. The applicants refused to recognise the tenants and never accepted rent from them. 7. On an unspecified date before 2015 Mr C. died and the property continued to be occupied by his wife and his son, who was dependent on the mother for medical reasons. 8. The rent due in 2015 was 185 euros (EUR) annually, in line with the adjustments provided by Act X of 2009. Prior to that, it was less. Constitutional redress proceedings
9. In 2015 the applicants instituted constitutional redress proceedings, against the Attorney General and the Housing Authority, requesting the court to find that the requisition order had breached their rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. Consequently, they sought to annul the order and asked the court to make an award of compensation for the violation suffered including the rent for the occupation of the premises, as well as any other relevant redress. 10. By a judgment of 16 January 2018, the first-instance court, upheld an objection that the Attorney General was not the right defendant. On the merits it found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and ordered the eviction of the tenants, and the Housing Authority to find alternative accommodation for them. It also ordered the Housing Authority to pay EUR 800 monthly in rent to the applicants until the eviction took place. 11. In particular the court considered that a request for judicial review was not an appropriate remedy given that the requisition had been lawful, and the decision to requisition the property had not been ultra vires, nor had it been taken against any principle of natural justice. It further considered that the interference was lawful and pursued a legitimate aim, as it had not been shown that couple C. was not in need of the property. However, the applicable rent was EUR 185 annually for a property which was valued by a court-appointed expert at EUR 13,200 annually (in 2018), that is, EUR 15.42 monthly instead of EUR 1,100 monthly (according to the court‑appointed architect) or EUR 600-700 (according to the Government’s expert). The applicants were thus suffering a disproportionate burden. 12. It considered that compensation was due as of 30 April 1987 [date when Malta introduced the right of individual petition] until the date of judgment and was to be calculated on the basis of the estimate of the court‑appointed architect. According to the court-appointed architect the annual rental value in 1970 was EUR 600, in 1975 EUR 660, in 1980 EUR 765, in 1985 EUR 900, in 1990 EUR 1,200, in 1995 EUR 1,500, in 2000 EUR 3,150, in 2005 EUR 4,725, in 2010 EUR 8,000 and in 2015, EUR 12,500. It followed that from 1987 to 2018 the applicants had to receive EUR 124,475. However, that amount had to be diminished in the light of the public interest at play. The court awarded EUR 100,000 in pecuniary damage reflecting loss of rent. It further awarded EUR 500 for every year, over the thirty-year period during which they suffered the violation, that is, EUR 15,000 in non-pecuniary damage. All the costs, except for those (of EUR 1,655) of the Attorney General (who had been wrongly sued and thus those costs were attributed to the applicants), were to be paid by the defendant. 13. Having considered Mrs C. and her son as vulnerable individuals, the former being an elderly woman dependant on a widow’s pension and the latter having medical needs, it considered that they were still worthy of protection, and thus they were to be given alternative accommodation by the State within a year - time during which the authorities were to pay the applicants an adequate rent of EUR 800 monthly. 14. The Housing Authority appealed. 15. By a judgment of 5 October 2018 the Constitutional Court confirmed the first-instance judgment on the merits but varied the redress. It confirmed the annulment of the requisition order and held that the tenants could no longer rely on the title given to them by virtue of the allocation of the property to them pursuant to the requisition order; it awarded EUR 40,000 in compensation, and revoked any other order given by the first-instance court. 16. In particular, the Constitutional Court considered that given the legitimate aim behind the measure, as well as the fact that the property had been rendered habitable by the authorities and the tenants, the pecuniary damage awarded was excessive. Moreover, that court had not had the competence to fix a future rent, which fell solely within the competence of the legislature. It revoked the order for eviction, considering that although the constitutional jurisdictions could give any appropriate remedy, including an order for eviction if necessary, it did not mean that rules concerning procedure and competence were to be ignored - a matter which could create uncertainty and arbitrariness. It was not for the courts of constitutional competence to decide on questions of title to property, their role being limited to deciding on possible breaches of human rights and awarding redress which would bring the violation to an end. It followed that in the present case the court could only decide that the tenants could no longer rely on their title to the property pursuant to its allocation to them following the requisition order. This would allow the tenants the possibility of a fair hearing where they would be able to submit evidence concerning any other title they might have to retain the property, without prejudice to any claim for damage that the applicants might have if the tenants continued to maintain the property without title following this judgment. Similarly, it was not for the court to interfere with allocation of housing and order that alternative accommodation be found for the applicants. 17. In arriving at the award of compensation the Constitutional Court took account of the following: the discrepancy in the rent payable vis-à-vis the rent on the open market; that the violation persisted since 1987; that the expert valuations were only indicative of losses; that the value of the property increased as a result of the rehabilitation undertaken by the authority; the legitimate aim at issue; the uncertainty faced by the applicants as to whether they would ever recover their property; the opportunity of the applicants to regain possession of their property now that an order was being made depriving the tenants of their title under the requisition order; the compensation given in similar cases; the expenses incurred by the applicants in pursuing these proceedings; and the fact that the award should cover both pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. 18. The applicants were ordered to pay half the costs of the appeal proceedings. Subsequent events
19. On 13 August 2018 part of the roof of the property collapsed causing damage to the rest of the property as well as adjacent property. According to the applicants’ architect, the damage had been due in part to the development being undertaken in the adjacent property, but the majority of the damage had been due to a lack of maintenance over the years. In that light, the applicants filed a judicial letter against the tenants and the Housing Authority requesting the vacation of the property. At the date of the introduction of the application no response had been received and the tenants were still occupying the premises. 20. According to the tenant’s testimony, during the below-mentioned proceedings, an architect’s report undertaken prior to the development of adjacent property had found that the property at issue was well maintained. According to the testimony, once that development had taken place, structural damage was caused to the property. As a result, criminal proceedings ensued which found the developer guilty of causing the damage as a result of negligence. The tenants instituted civil proceedings against the developer for civil damage. 21. In June 2019 the applicants instituted eviction proceedings which were (at the time of observations – September 2020) still pending. Mrs C. died in July 2019 and those proceedings were being continued by her son, who was resisting the eviction, despite the Constitutional Court judgment and the fact that the property was in a dangerous state following its partial collapse. RELEVANT LEGAL FRAMEWORK
22. The relevant domestic law is set out in Apap Bologna v. Malta (no. 46931/12, §§ 24-30, 30 August 2016). THE LAW
ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 1 of PROTOCOL No. 1 to THE CONVENTION
23. The applicants complained that they were still victims of a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 upheld by the Constitutional Court given the low amount of compensation awarded. The provision reads as follows:
“Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”
AdmissibilityThe parties’ submissions

24. The Government submitted that the applicants had lost their victim status following the Constitutional Court’s finding which had acknowledged the violation and awarded EUR 40,000 in compensation as well as ordered that the tenants could no longer rely on the requisition order to retain title to the property. 25. In their second round of observations, the Government noted that the applicants had neither appealed, nor cross-appealed the first-instance court’s decision to consider only the period 1987 onwards, it followed that any claim in that respect had to be rejected as being inadmissible for non‑exhaustion. 26. Relying on the Court’s case law, the applicants maintained that they remained victims of the violation upheld by the Constitutional Court given that the total compensation granted had been too low compared to the damage actually suffered. They noted that the rental value of the property according to the court-appointed expert was EUR 13,200 annually, while they had only been awarded EUR 40,000 for a violation which persisted over decades and continued to do so since the Constitutional Court had not evicted the tenants. As a result, the applicants were still facing legal proceedings to evict the tenants and bring the violation to an end. Furthermore, the domestic courts had not taken cognisance of the period prior to 1987, despite the Convention being applicable to Malta as of 1967.

Outcome for Article P1-1: violation