A man has been awarded €445,000 in damages because the process to grant him compensation for the expropriation of his land 40 years ago was not yet completed.
The European Court of Human Rights found that Peter Azzopardi, whose Msida land was lawfully expropriated to build a reservoir, “was made to bear the disproportionate burden” because of delays.
The court ordered the Maltese government to pay Mr Azzopardi the damages within three months.
Mr Azzopardi was the director of Canadian Brothers Limited that held 772 square metres of land in Msida by way of sub-emphyteusis. He had filed a planning application to develop the land.
In October 1974 a notice in the Government Gazette declared the expropriation of 901 square metres of land, which included Mr Azzopardi’s, to build a reservoir.
In June 1992 he was served with a notice offering him some €18,000 for the land acquisition but he contested the sum and made a counter claim of about €559,000 that was not accepted.
He was made to bear the disproportionate burden
At the time the law did not allow a person to initiate a case for compensation. But a person could apply to the civil court to get a timeline by which the Commissioner of Land had to initiate compensation proceedings.
Mr Azzopardi repeatedly requested the Commissioner of Land to process his case.
But by 2000 the Commissioner had still not instituted proceedings before the Land Arbitration Board to determine the relevant compensation, so Mr Azzopardi instituted constitutional proceedings.
In the constitutional case Mr Azzopardi claimed that, as a result of the inaction of the authorities, he had been deprived of the property without receiving the compensation to which he was entitled and that such compensation had not been determined within a reasonable time. In November 2010 the First Hall of the Civil Court, in its constitutional competence, awarded him €25,000 in non-pecuniary damages resulting from these violations.
The judgment was appealed and, in November 2011, the Constitutional Court confirmed the first-instance judgment and the damages were paid in January 2012.
Meanwhile, in January 2004, the Commissioner initiated proceedings before the Land Arbitration Board to determine the compensation due. These proceedings are still pending. Mr Azzopardi continued to pay a ground rent of €183.51 per year.
In May 2012 he took the matter to the European Court of Human Rights and claimed his rights were breached on account of denial of access to court and length of proceedings, and in connection with the delay in payment of compensation.
The court found that the taking of the land was lawful, since it was in the public interest.
“It was thus not the inherent unlawfulness of the taking of the land that was at the origin of the violation found... but rather the delay in instituting the relevant proceedings and the fact that to date – nearly 40 years after the taking of the land – the applicant has still not been awarded any compensation for it,” the court ruled.