ECtHR: COURT AWARDED OWNERS OF APARTMENTS WITH PROTECTED RENT OVER EUR 150,000.00

Confirmation of what we recently wrote also came in the form of a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 10 June 2021, by which the Court, acting in the case of Skelin-Hrvoj and Đuričić v. Croatia, ruled that the right of the applicants, owners of apartments in which protected tenants live, to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions guaranteed by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention had been violated.

The Court thus upheld its position from Statileo v. Croatia, application no. 12027/10, according to which the applicant had suffered a disproportionate and excessive burden as he had to provide the protected tenant with a stay in the apartment in question, with no general interest of the community which would justify such a significant restriction, while the competent domestic authorities, despite their wide margin of appreciation, did not strike a balance between the general interest of the community and the protection of the applicant's rights.

In its latest decision, the Court found that the applicants were entitled to compensation for damages in the amount of lost profits that the owners of apartments inhabited by protected tenants would have made in the period from December 1997 (the first month after the entry into force of the Convention in Croatia) until the day of filing the claim for damages.

The lost profit in question is the difference between the rents that the protected tenants were obliged to pay and the market rents of the apartments in question. Accordingly, the first applicant was entitled to compensation in the amount of EUR 54,000.00, and the second applicant in the amount of EUR 95,100.00. In addition, the applicants were awarded compensation for non-pecuniary damage, each in the amount of EUR 5,000.00.

More about the problem of protected rent - Damages from the Republic of Croatia – the problem of protected rent