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ALLA TYMOFEYEVA
CYIL 6 ȍ2015Ȏ
to return the building to the applicant or, failing that, to pay him EUR 1,900,000
(one million, nine hundred thousand euros) in respect of pecuniary damages. Given
the different material basis of legal and natural persons, it becomes clear that for the
Court the rights of legal persons are not more important than the rights of natural
persons. They just lose more, and consequently, the awards are higher.
It is possible to say, almost for sure, that the authors of the Convention, when
writing the Convention, did not plan to compensate the financial risks of corporations.
Nonetheless, the right to property may have a number of forms. A person may own
a car, a flat or a company. Non-protection of the property rights of the owners of
businesses would be discriminatory. Therefore, in the end, the Court also offered
protection to legal persons. Moreover, the notion of A 1 P-1 precisely requires it.
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The highest amounts are unsurprisingly awarded in relation to a breach of this
provision. Businesses, being a grouping of individuals, possess bigger capital and at
the same time their losses could be higher.
It would probably be reasonable to determine limits to the maximum amount
of just satisfaction awards applied to legal persons. The criteria for restriction of such
amounts require conducting serious economic research in all 47 member states. They
must also take into account situations where an applicant company is a foreigner in
the respondent state, the number of shareholders it has and many others factors. On
the other hand, when we already now have judgments with awards of almost two
billion euros, the limited reward could not be smaller. Consequently, introduction of
limitations would hardly solve the problem. Anyhow, it would be of use to set up the
tables with average amounts of compensation provided by the Court under each type
of violation. The tables should be accompanied with comprehensive explanations
on the criteria for giving such an amount and with references to the related Court’s
case-law.
Conclusions
Analysis of the sources related to the question demonstrates that the term ‘just
satisfaction’ is not the same as the notion ‘satisfaction’ in the DARS and may comprise
all the types of reparation. The given study illuminates the fact that the Convention
not only provides legal persons with protection of their human rights, but also that
the awards received by them are of an outstanding nature. The table produced by
the author shows that just satisfaction includes not only compensation of pecuniary
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Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 reads:
“Every natural or
legal person
is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be
deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by
law and by the general principles of international law.
The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws
as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure
the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”