LAZAROV v. SERBIA
Inadmissible
Alena Poláčková;Branko Lubarda;Helen Keller;Helena Jäderblom;Johannes Silvis;Luis López Guerra;Pere Pastor Vilanova
1. The applicants, Mr Antal Lazarov and Ms Irena Lazarov, were Serbian nationals, who were born in 1928 and 1929 respectively and lived in Pančevo. They were represented before the Court by Ms M. Bosilj, a lawyer practising in Pančevo. Mr and Ms Lazarov died on 3 April 2011 and 9 December 2011 respectively. 2. On 3 August 2012 the applicants’ daughter, Ms Elizabeta Đurić, informed the Registry that she wished to pursue the case before the Court. She also informed the Court that she wished to be represented by Ms M. Bosilj and submitted a power of attorney to that effect. 3. The Government did not contest that request. 4. Given the fact that Ms Elizabeta Đurić has a “definite pecuniary interest” in the proceedings in issue (see, mutatis mutandis, Mijanović v. Montenegro, no. 19580/06, § 55, 17 September 2013, and Marčić and Others v. Serbia, no. 17556/05, §§ 35-39, 30 October 2007), the Court finds that she has standing to proceed in her parents’ stead. Although Ms Đurić is therefore now the applicant, the Court will continue to refer to the late Mr and Ms Lazarov as the applicants. 5. The Serbian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent at the time, Mr S. Carić. summarised as follows. 7. The applicants owned a house in Pančevo measuring 78.41 square metres and a plot of land next to it. 8. On 14 October 1976 the applicants entered into an agreement (sporazum) with the Municipality of Pančevo (“the Municipality”). Under the agreement, they agreed to the expropriation of their house and the adjacent plot of land, while the Municipality undertook to provide them with a comfortable flat with two separate rooms (dvosoban komforan stan) in the Tesla neighbourhood of Pančevo and 635,000 Serbian dinars (RSD). RSD 555,000 was paid immediately, while another RSD 80,000 was to be paid after the Municipality took possession of the house. 9. On 14 December 1976 the Municipal Secretariat for Housing and Communal Affairs and Urbanism issued a decision expropriating the house and transferring it into social ownership. The applicants continued to live in the house while the adjacent plot of land was used for the construction of an apartment building. 10. As the Municipality had failed to provide them with an appropriate flat, on 24 March 1979 the applicants filed a civil action against it, requesting to have an appropriate flat allocated to them or to be paid compensation for their house. 11. By 1982 an apartment building had been built next to the applicants’ house. On an unspecified date in 1982 the Municipality offered them a flat in the complex, which measured 52.25 square metres. The applicants refused to move into the apartment, as they considered it unsuitable. 12. On 13 October 1982 an expert appointed by the Municipality found that both the house in which the applicants were living and the flat which the Municipality was offering were comfortable, but that the house, being bigger, was a more suitable home. 13. The Municipality does not appear to have ever suggested any other form of compensation. 14. The applicants continued to live in the house. The change of ownership was not registered with the land registry. 15. The facts of the case, as submitted by the Government, may be summarised as follows. 16. On 9 May 1979 the applicants withdrew their civil action against the Municipality, and the proceedings formally ended on 14 May 1979. 17. On 9 February 1995 the applicants filed another civil action against the Municipality, requesting the RSD 80,000 and that a sixty-square-metre flat with two separate rooms be allocated to them. 18. On 21 February 1996 the applicants withdrew their civil action again. 19. On 9 March 1998 the applicants entered into a new agreement with the Municipality. Under this agreement, the applicants were registered as the occupiers of the house in which they lived, and the Municipality was registered as the sole occupier of the plot of land on which the apartment building had been constructed. 20. The Government submitted that this agreement had settled the dispute between the applicants and the Municipality, and that the 1976 expropriation order was no longer effective.