Is it possible to lose a purchased land plot without compensation: ECHR ruling
The European Court of Human Rights concluded that the return of the disputed forestry land plot to state ownership pursued a legitimate aim of ensuring compliance with the rule of law and corresponded to public interests, while the applicant, when acquiring such a plot, did not exercise due caution and consciously accepted the risks associated with its acquisition.
This is the conclusion the Court reached in the case of Galyna Stepanivna NOGA v. Ukraine.
According to the case circumstances, in 2008 the applicant purchased a land plot from company "N" based on a purchase agreement. In May 2011, the prosecutor filed a lawsuit in the interests of the state to reclaim this land plot from company "N" and the applicant on the grounds that the relevant lands were forestry lands and belonged to state ownership.
The final decision in the case was made on June 22, 2016: courts of three instances satisfied the claim, establishing that the disputed land plot belonged to forestry lands, the disposal of which is exclusively authorized by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, not the village council, which had withdrawn this land plot from the state forestry fund and classified it as recreational land.
Later, in June 2017, the applicant filed a lawsuit against the village council and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine seeking compensation for the value of the property. The courts dismissed the claim, noting that compensation claims should have been made against her counterparty under the purchase agreement – company "N".
Assessing compliance with the principle of proportionality, the ECHR found no violation of a fair balance between public and private interests.
The Court emphasized that the applicant should have exercised special caution before concluding the purchase agreement, as she could have known about the plot's belonging to a special category of lands and the risk of termination of ownership rights over it, considering ongoing court proceedings regarding the right to dispose of this land from 2004 to 2010.
The ECHR also noted a significant difference between the price paid by the applicant for the land plot (75,055 UAH, approximately 6,800 euros) and its appraised value (528,366 UAH, approximately 48,500 euros), which raised doubts about the legality of the concluded purchase agreement.
Given these circumstances, the ECHR concluded that despite the lack of prospects for receiving compensation for the confiscated property, the applicant did not exercise due caution and consciously accepted the risks associated with acquiring the disputed land plot, and therefore there are no grounds to conclude a violation of the fair balance of interests in this case.
Text of the ruling 45763/20 Galyna Stepanivna NOGA v. Ukraine.
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