Judgment concerning Greece
In the case of Jewish Community of Thessaloniki v. Greece the Court held that there had been a violation of the protection of property.
The case concerned the dismissal of the applicant community’s demand to be judicially recognised as the sole owner of a plot of land on the grounds that it had been categorised as “enemy property” after the end of the Second World War – although the ownership of the plot had been transferred to them in 1934.
The Court found that the Court of Cassation’s interpretation of the relevant domestic legislation and its application to this case had not been foreseeable. It was not reasonable to expect the applicant community to have known that the property which had already come under its ownership in 1934 would be affected in 1950 and 1955 by the legislation concerning enemy property.