Red card from the European Court of Human Rights

Gabriela ŞTEFAN

Hundreds of thousands of Romanians, property owners or their descendents, may get the chance - after 20 years - to recover their properties that were confiscated by the Communist regime or to at least to receive compensation for these. However, if this happens, it won't be the merit of the Romanian state or of the Romanian Justice system, but of the European Court of Human Rights. What will be a normal act of justice for numerous citizens will be an extremely tough sanction for Romania.

Yesterday, the Strasbourg court tried two cases against the Romanian state in the matter of property restitution. This time, the European Court of Human Rights called on a special procedure, that of pilot judgments, which apply only in cases where it determines that a certain state frequently (and for large numbers of persons) violates a specific right protected by the European Court of Human Rights. In our case it's property rights violations. The European court is to decide in the two cases and there are very high chances that it will issue a pilot judgment. Through such a judgment the European justices indicate to the country found guilty a series of measures they are to take in order to end the abuses determined. Until the state takes all said measures, all similar trials on the docket of the European Court of Human Rights are suspended.

For 20 years the political class - Parliament and Government - has "manufactured" dozens of acts in the field of property: laws, government decisions, emergency government ordinances, etc. All these, sometimes contradictory in provisions, did nothing else but further complicate the issue of property and create legally and humanely aberrant situations. An ill-fated contribution to this whole thing was also provided by the Romanian Justice system which has passed completely opposite decisions in legally identical situations. More so, the compensation solution failed to work and now, when the state's coffers are empty, it seems utopic.

The intervention of the European Court of Human Rights by indicating efficient measures would be a well deserved sanction for the Romanian state which - for 20 years - was unable to solve a problem that has already cost us so much money considering the judgments passed in Strasbourg. Equally though, the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights could be the only chance for hundreds of thousands of Romanians humiliated by the state and the Justice system.

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