THIRD SECTION
CASE OF CHONIN AND OTHERS v. BULGARIA
(Application no. 30116/23)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
30 September 2025
 
 
 
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Chonin and Others v. Bulgaria,
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Peeter Roosma, President,
 Diana Kovatcheva,
 Canòlic Mingorance Cairat, judges,
and Olga Chernishova, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 30116/23) against the Republic of Bulgaria lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 20 July 2023 by ten Bulgarian nationals (two of them holding in addition Belgian and German nationalities), whose relevant details are listed in the appended table, (“the applicants”), and who were represented by Mr M. Ekimdzhiev, Ms K. Boncheva and Ms M. Dokova-Kostadinova, lawyers practising in Plovdiv;
the decision to give notice of the complaints concerning the lengthy duration of a restitution procedure to the Bulgarian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Tsocheva from the Ministry of Justice, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;
the fact that the Governments of Belgium and Germany did not make use of their right to intervene in the proceedings (Article 36 § 1 of the Convention);
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 9 September 2025,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns the length of restitution proceedings under the Restitution of Title to Forests and Forestry Land Act (hereinafter “the Forests Restitution Act”). 2. The applicants are among the heirs of Ms F., collectively inheriting about four-fifths of her estate. Ms F. had owned an afforested island in the Danube and forests in the mainland, all nationalised in 1948. After the adoption of the Forests Restitution Act in 1997, the applicants initiated restitution proceedings concerning those properties. The initial stages of the proceedings have been described in the judgment of Popov and Chonin v. Bulgaria (no. 36094/08, §§ 9-14 and 22-26, 17 February 2015), brought by one of the current applicants. 3. Notably, in a decision dated 12 December 2000, the competent land commission (later renamed the Agriculture Department) recognised to the heirs of Ms F. the right to compensation in lieu of restitution for 93.38 hectares of forestry land. Restitution in kind was not possible, as the land once owned by Ms F. was located in a frontier zone and thus classified as exclusive State property. Given that the Forests Restitution Act only allows compensation via equivalent State-owned land (see Popov and Chonin, cited above, § 27), the competent authorities spent the following years seeking to identify appropriate substitute plots. Even though a 2007 court judgment identified one such plot and ordered its transfer to the applicants, the judgment was ultimately deemed unenforceable as the land in question formed part of a national park (ibid., §§ 22-24). 4. The parties have informed the Court of the following developments since the Popov and Chonin judgment:
5. In a series of decisions issued in 2013 and 2018 the Agriculture Departments in Montana and Berkovitsa allocated forestry land totalling about 59 hectares to the applicants. These decisions were served on Mr Chonin, who acted as a representative of all applicants, in 2018. He challenged the decisions, arguing that the quality of the forests was inferior to that of Ms F.’s original forests. Nevertheless, the decisions were upheld in final court judgments given in 2023 and 2024. 6. An additional plot of land of about 5.3 hectares has been identified, but the process of officially allocating it to the applicants remains ongoing. The competent authorities are still working to locate further plots to compensate the applicants for the remaining about 29 hectares of forestry land.

Outcome for Article P1-1: violation