Judgment concerning Greece
In the case of Micha and Others v. Greece the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time and a violation of the right to an effective remedy, in conjunction with the right to protection of property.
The case concerned the restriction on the applicants’ use of their land as a result of a proposed amendment to the urban development plan under which it would be turned into a green belt, and the authorities’ refusal to comply with the judgments delivered by the administrative courts in that connection.
The Court observed that the applicants’ use of their land had been restricted in the form of a series of decisions, rearrangements and reclassifications adopted by the different authorities. The Supreme Administrative Court’s judgment in favour of the applicants and the decisions of that court’s three-judge panel responsible for supervising the enforcement of its judgments had been fruitless.
The applicants had therefore been unable to have the expropriation decisions against them set aside, the restrictions on the use of their land lifted or their properties reclassified as building land. That situation also revealed the lack of an effective remedy by which to impel the authorities to comply with the judicial decisions concerning the applicants’ property.