NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

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 Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 precisely requires it. The highest amounts unsurprisingly are 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 Article 34 NGOs. 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 euro, the limited reward could not be smaller. Consequently, introduction of the 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 giving such an amount and with references to the related Court’s case-law. In view of the sums received by Article 34 NGOs, as it is seen form the table, it may appear that good lawyers would be interested in representing such clients as a new direction of their business. They will be afforded more, and, as a result, will provide legal entities with a higher degree of protection. This again could lead to new judgments with millions and billions of just satisfaction relating to non-governmental organisations under Article 34 of the Convention. The present section provides for only a quick glance at the question the Court’s judgments concerning just satisfaction awards. The subject matter is so wide that it would be possible to write a monograph on it. This is, however, not the aim of the present study. To conclude, we may say that not only do all of the specifics analysed in Chapters I and II confirm an exceptional status of NGOs under the Convention, but the incredible amounts of just satisfaction also distinguish Article 34 NGOs from the other applicants envisaged by this treaty.

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