FIFTH SECTIONCASE OF GOROPASHYN v. UKRAINE(Application no. 67127/16)      JUDGMENT STRASBOURG24 April 2025 This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.In the case of Goropashyn v. Ukraine,The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: Andreas Zünd, President, Kateřina Šimáčková, Mykola Gnatovskyy, judges,and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,Having regard to:the application (no. 67127/16) against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 10 November 2016 by a Ukrainian national, Mr Sergiy Grygorovych Goropashyn (“the applicant”), who was born in 1963, lives in Zhytomyr and was represented by Mr S.S. Goropashyn, a lawyer practising in Zhytomyr;the decision to give notice of the complaints under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Sokorenko, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;the parties’ observations;Having deliberated in private on 20 March 2025,Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE1. The application concerns the invalidation of the applicant’s title to a plot of land some twenty years after its allocation.2. The applicant, being a liquidator of the Chernobyl disaster, was entitled by law to obtain a plot of land for construction of an individual house. In 1993 the Executive Committee of the City Council allocated a plot of land to the applicant and its boundaries were demarcated on site.3. In 1996 the applicant obtained ownership documents to that plot of land. It appears that he had not started any construction on the land but had been using it for recreation with his family. From other documents in the case file it appears that the land was in a dilapidated condition and that the neighbours were using it for grazing.4. In 2013 the applicant discovered that construction work was being carried out on his land. He then found out that in 2011, his plot of land had been allocated by the neighbouring Ivanivka Village Council (“the Village Council”) to O., who had later sold it to H. The latter had obtained title to it and started building a house. The applicant initiated three sets of proceedings.5. In the first set of proceedings the applicant’s claims against the decision of Village Council to allocate the land to O. were granted by the local and appellate courts on 19 January and 1 April 2015, respectively. The courts found that Village Council had not provided any documents confirming its boundaries at the time of the events. At the same time, in 1990-1991 Zhytomyr City Council (“the City Council”) and Village Council had agreed on the transfer of certain plots of land, which had previously belonged to a local collective farm, to the city with the aim of creating a new zone for the construction of individual houses. The relevant decisions were still in force and had not been repealed. Later, the city had assigned a name to the streets that had been created after the distribution of the plots of land to individuals. The courts concluded that the Village Council had had no right to dispose of the plot of land in question as it had belonged to the city. On 14 July 2016, however, the above-mentioned judgments were quashed by a court of cassation and the proceedings were terminated on the grounds that a dispute of that kind should have been examined in civil and not administrative proceedings.6. In the second set of proceedings the applicant’s claims to have O.’s title invalidated were granted by a final judgment of the local court on 19 May 2015. Its findings were based on the local and appellate courts’ judgments in the first set of proceedings mentioned above.7. In the third set of proceedings, initiated in November 2013, the applicant brought a claim against H. in the civil courts, seeking to have the contract of sale between H. and O. declared null and void. The applicant relied on the findings made by the courts in the two previous sets of proceedings. H. lodged a counterclaim to have the applicant’s title invalidated.8. By a judgment of 11 November 2015, the Zhytomyr District Court granted H.’s claims and invalidated the applicant’s title. It found, firstly, that pursuant to the land legislation in force at the material time, an executive committee of a city council was not entitled to make decisions on allocation of land, that power being a prerogative of the city council. It further found that the redistribution of land between the city of Zhytomyr and the village of Ivanivka had never been duly formalised (in particular, because in order to change the boundaries of a city, a special submission had to be made to the Parliament of Ukraine) and the disputed plot of land had still been treated as belonging to the territory of the village of Ivanivka. In that connection the court referred to documents provided by the State Land Resources Agency and the State postal services provider confirming that all houses in the respective district belonged to the village of Ivanivka. Lastly, the court stated that it could not take into account the findings in the judgments delivered in the first set of proceedings that had been referred to by the applicant, because they had been made in administrative proceedings.9. On 26 January 2016 the above-mentioned judgment was upheld by the Zhytomyr Regional Court of Appeal which noted that the representative of the City Council had acknowledged that the disputed plot of land had been located outside the territory of the city as defined in 1973 and that its transfer had not been formalised. The city, therefore, had had no right to dispose of it.10. On 11 May 2016 the Higher Specialised Court for Civil and Criminal Cases gave a final judgment in the case, upholding the lower courts’ conclusions.THE COURT’S ASSESSMENTScope of the case11. The applicant complained under Articles 6 and 13 of the Convention, as well as under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, that he had been deprived of his property arbitrarily, with the domestic courts failing to assess his case properly. The interference with his rights had not been in the public interest and he had not been offered any compensation.12. The Court, being the master of the characterisation to be given in law to the facts of the case (see Radomilja and Others v. Croatia [GC], nos. 37685/10 and 22768/12, §§ 114 and 126, 20 March 2018), considers that the applicant’s complaints fall to be examined under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 only.ALLEGED VIOLATION of article 1 of protocol No. 1 to the convention13. With regard to admissibility, the Government argued that the applicant could have claimed compensation from the City Council for its unlawful actions and decisions as provided for in Article 1173 of the Civil Code, yet he had not done so. The applicant disagreed. The Court considers that the Government’s argument is closely related to the merits of the case and therefore joins it to the examination on the merits.14. The Court notes that the applicant’s complaint is not manifestly ill‑founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention or inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.15. On the merits, the Government conceded that there had been an interference with the applicant’s property rights, but they considered it to be lawful and pursuing a legitimate aim. In particular, the applicant’s title needed to be revoked to correct a mistake in the allocation of land which had been in breach of the relevant regulations. That had also served to protect the interests of H., who had been a bona fide acquirer. As regards proportionality, the Government maintained their position that the applicant had had the opportunity to claim compensation; they also noted that the applicant had never started any construction on the disputed land.16. The applicant disagreed with the Government’s assertion that he had obtained his land unlawfully, as he had all the necessary documents for the land and if there had been any irregularities surrounding the allocation of land, they were in no way attributable to him. He further argued that the domestic courts had failed to clearly indicate a provision of domestic law on which his rights to the land had been revoked. The applicant also disagreed with the Government’s assertion that H. had been a bona fide acquirer, arguing that she must have questioned the lawfulness of O.’s title, given that the land was located several kilometres away from the village of Ivanivka and that O. had sought to sell the land immediately after acquiring it. The applicant also emphasised that at the time of the delivery of the judgments in the third set of proceedings, all judgments given in previous sets of proceedings (which had established that Village Council had had no right to dispose of the land and had invalidated O.’s title) had still been effective. Lastly, he noted that all other persons who had obtained land in the same area had not been affected in any way and had retained their property rights.17.

Outcome for Article P1-1: violation