Prague/Strasbourg, Feb 13 (CTK) – The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Czech Republic must pay 2.19 million crowns in total in compensation to three complainants who claim that the country violated their rights by rent regulation, CTK has learnt from the court’s database.
The European court’s verdicts on compensation for the Czech rent regulation have not taken effect yet, the Justice Ministry said.
The Civic Association of Housing Owners in the Czech Republic (OSMD) says the Czech courts approve a compensation that is about 90 percent lower than the sum calculated according to the Strasbourg court’s methodology.
The European Court says the compensation must equal the difference between the market rent and the regulated rent from the period before the rent deregulation.
“The current court verdict has finally decided about an appropriate way of calculating the compensation for restricting the ownership rights in connection with a long-time rent regulation,” the OSMD said in a press release.
The Czech courts’ calculation was based on the rent set in the law on unilateral increase in rents for flats for 2007, the association says.
The European Court of Human Rights followed up the verdict from July 2014 in which it ruled that the rights of Czech landlords had been violated.
Apart from the property damage, the court also approved compensation of 162,000 crowns in total for other than proprietary loss for two complainants. Besides, the Czech Republic should cover the court proceedings costs of 227,000 crowns.
About 5,000 Czech owners of flats and apartment houses filed a complaint in Strasbourg in 2005. They claimed that not even their minimum profit for the real estate maintenance was guaranteed due to the rent regulation.
They put their total damage at almost 50 billion crowns.
The OSMD later selected pilot cases for the European court to illustrate model situations.
The rent deregulation was launched in the Czech Republic in 2007 and ended in 2012. It applied to 700,000 households.
