CASE OF BUKOVČANOVÁ AND OTHERS v. SLOVAKIA
Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 - Protection of property (Article 1 para. 2 of Protocol No. 1 - Control of the use of property)
Alena Poláčková;Branko Lubarda;Georgios A. Serghides;Helena Jäderblom;Johannes Silvis;Luis López Guerra;Pere Pastor Vilanova
6. The applicants were born in 1952, 1947, 1973 and 1980 respectively and live in Bratislava. 7. They are co-owners of a residential house located in the Bratislava-Staré Mesto municipality. The house was built in 1929 by their familial predecessors, who during the previous regime donated it to the State under circumstances that would later be accepted as constituting duress. The ownership of the house was restored to the first and second applicants on 10 December 1991 under special legislation on restitution. Consequently, each of them acquired a 4/12 share of the ownership of the house. The third and fourth applicants each acquired a 2/12 share of the ownership of the house on 25 January 1995 and 29 March 1999 respectively. 8. At the time the applicants acquired the ownership of the house five flats were inhabited by tenants with regulated rent. Under the relevant legislation this meant that (i) the applicants had to accept that their flats were occupied by these tenants, (ii) they could charge them no more than the maximum amount of rent fixed by the State, (iii) they could not unilaterally terminate the leases, and (iv) they could not sell the flats other than to the tenants (“the rent-control scheme”). 9. The rent-control scheme applies, or has applied, to the flats in question, as follows: a four-room flat with a surface area of 129 sq. m which had been subject to rent control until January 2006 (“the first flat”); a four-room flat with a surface area of 130 sq. m which had been subject to rent control until September 2008 (“the second flat”); a two-room flat with a surface area of 87 sq. m and two four-room flats measuring 126 sq. m each (“the third, fourth and fifth flats”), to which rent control still applies. 10. The monthly rent chargeable for the flats under the applicable legislation was equivalent to some 10 to 17.5 euros (EUR) between 1992 and 1999. After several increases in the regulated rent, in June 2007 the applicants were able to charge some EUR 73.5 monthly in respect of the two-room flat and approximately EUR 125 monthly in respect of the fourroom flats. According to the Government’s calculations the regulated rent reached EUR 236 and EUR 400 respectively in 2014. 11. The parties provided differing figures as to the market rent. The applicants relied on data from the National Association of Real Estate Agencies (“the NAREA”) and claimed that the monthly market rent for comparable tworoom flats in the area reached around EUR 662 and for comparable fourroom flats some EUR 1,296 between 2004 and 2007. The Government submitted an expert valuation according to which the monthly market rent for the applicants’ flats in 2010 amounted to EUR 561 and EUR 772 to EUR 797 respectively.