Strasbourg court orders €450,000 in compensation for Msida expropriation

The Strasbourg court has instructed the Maltese government to pay an entrepreneur some €450,000 in damages over a compensation battle that dragged on for 40 years, after the State expropriated his land back in the 1970s.

The European Court of Human Rights held Malta responsible to pay Peter Azzopardi, on behalf of Canadian Brothers Limited, within the next three months, €445,000 in damages, and €6,000 in court expenses, for breaching his right to fair trial and his right to enjoyment of his property.

Canadian Brothers held a sub-emphyteusis on land in Msida, measuring approximately 772 square metres, which it intended to develop for commercial purposes. No permit was ever issued for their development application, and in 1974 an expropriation order was issued, for the construction of a reservoir.

In 1992, Azzopardi was offered €18,000 in compensation but he contested the amount offered and by means of a judicial letter made a counter-claim for approximately €559,050.

Although the law at the time did not allow him to initiate proceedings for compensation, case-law established that the Commissioner of Land was obliged to initiate such proceedings.

Azzopardi said he repeatedly solicited the authorities to process his case, but to no avail. By 2000 the Commissioner of Land had still not instituted proceedings before the Land Arbitration Board to determine the relevant compensation, and the applicant instituted constitutional redress proceedings.

In 2010, the Civil Court found a violation of the European Convention of Human Rights, noting that compensation proceedings had not been instituted by the authorities three decades after the taking of the land and that, 40 years after, the applicant had still not received any compensation. The court awarded Azzopardi €25,000 in damages.

The decision was confirmed by the Constitutional Court in 2011, having found no valid reason justifying the delay in paying compensation for the expropriation.

The damages were subsequently paid in 2012, but compensation was still pending up to present-day. While technical members of the Land Arbitration Board had valued the land in 1990 at €272,000, Azzopardi insisted that the land was valued at the much higher value of €559,000.

In its decision, the European Court noted that despite the payment of damages, after 38 years the Maltese courts had still failed to determine the amount of pecuniary compensation.

Azzopardi claimed the value of the property in 2004 was estimated at €775,000 – plus €7,156.89 for ground rent paid from 1974 to date. He further claimed €160,000 in non-pecuniary damage “for the mental suffering caused by the violations, and the frustration of seeing his commercial project come to nothing, despite the area being a prime commercial location.”

The government considered that the expropriation had been lawful and that there was therefore no call for awarding the full market value.

The government said that in the Land Arbitration Board proceedings, the land had been valued at €272,000 in 1990 but the ECHR said the government failed to submit any calculation adjusting this value to its present-day value

Without an impartial estimate of the value of the land in 1974, except for the LAB estimate of 1990, the Court decided to ‘update’ that value to €445,000.