English• The government would need 21 billion Euros to pay up all the compensation requests, according to an estimate sent to the ECHR
The Romanian state has 18 months available to draft the legislation for compensating property owners whose assets were seized by the communist regime, according to a pilot-decision published yesterday on the website of the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR). The ruling of the court was made in a case in which three former property owners, born before 1940, lodged a complaint stating that Romanian authorities tarried for years compensating the buildings and properties seized by the state, before 1989.
The pilot-decision means that any cases which are similar to the aforementioned case will see a similar ruling, lawyers say.
Even though the decision looks like a victory for former property owners, in reality things are a little different, because the judges of the Court have decided they would not try any other cases in which compensation is being requested, for the next 18 months.
"It is a victory of a rather dubious value. Three people won, but a few hundred others will need to wait a year and a half before the Court will hear their cases", lawyer Gheorghe Piperea said for BURSA.
The decision of the Court also states that the Court took into consideration the fact that the Proprietatea Fund, which was created for compensating former owners, has not been listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange yet, as it should have been in 2005, even though the possibility of some of its shareholders selling its shares would relieve some of the pressure on the State budget, which is now overwhelmed with demands for compensation from former property owners. The judges of the Court have called attention to a report sent by the Romanian government, which said that it would need 21 billion Euros to pay all the former owners.
The Court has also taken into consideration the situation of the National Authority for the Restitution of Properties, where out of a total of 68,000 cases, only 21,000 had been solved by May 2010.
"The Court has repeatedly said that the current mechanisms for compensating former property owners are dysfunctional, including the Proprietatea Fund. The Fund is now in the final hour before its listing on the Stock Exchange, but the decision of the Court has now created another extremely thorny problem. The Articles of Incorporation of the Fund was amended to turn it into an investment fund, and not into a fund for compensating former property owners. Even if it will get listed, the Fund"s line of business is no longer compensating its shareholders, which could create further problems", attorney Piperea said.
The European Court for Human Rights has decided that the Romanian state will need to pay approximately 170,000 Euros to the three plaintiffs.
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