1265 meeting (20-22 September 2016) (DH)

Transcription

1 SECRETARIAT GENERAL SECRETARIAT OF THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS SECRETARIAT DU COMITE DES MINISTRES Contact: Clare Ovey Tel: DH-DD(206)749 Date: 20/06/206 Documents distributed at the request of a Representative shall be under the sole responsibility of the said Representative, without prejudice to the legal or political position of the Committee of Ministers. Meeting: 265 meeting (20-22 September 206) (DH) Communication from NGOs (Asociaţia pentru Proprietatea Privată (APP), Asociatia Proprietarilor Deposedati Abuziv de Stat (APDAS) and Restitution und Menschenrechte in Rumănien e.v. (RESRO)) (30/05/206)) and reply from the authorities (03/06/206) in the Strain group of cases against Romania (Application No. 5700/00). Information made available under Rule 9.2 of the Rules of the Committee of Ministers for the supervision of the execution of judgments and of the terms of friendly settlements. * * * * * * * * * * * Les documents distribués à la demande d un/e Représentant/e le sont sous la seule responsabilité dudit/de ladite Représentant/e, sans préjuger de la position juridique ou politique du Comité des Ministres. Réunion : 265 réunion (20-22 septembre 206) (DH) Communication d ONG (Asociaţia pentru Proprietatea Privată (APP), Asociatia Proprietarilor Deposedati Abuziv de Stat (APDAS) et Restitution und Menschenrechte in Rumănien e.v. (RESRO)) (30/05/206)) et réponse des autorités (03/06/206) dans le groupe d affaires Strain contre Roumanie (Requête n o 5700/00) [anglais uniquement] Informations mises à disposition en vertu de la Règle 9.2 des Règles du Comité des Ministres pour la surveillance de l exécution des arrêts et des termes des règlements amiables.

2 -- 3~- ~A~ 0~ ~~~~~aj:a 0 ~ ::~~ ~~~~=~~.t~a 8 ~~~::ti~ APP,~;r ':,~~~~:. ~~~-{, /'. ~:'.._'.[;;;t Asociatia Proprietarilor Deposedati Abuziv de Stat - APDAS Romania RESRO - Restitution und Menschenrechte in Rumânien e.v. Germania ln a former document the associations of abusively dispossesed owners denounced the way romanian authorities delay the problem of property restitution. The main points of the criticisms were focussed in following categories: /. The deliberate delay of the solution of restitution requests by administrative and judicial authorities and the failure to meet the deadlines imposed by law. Il. Entitled persans were discriminated. Ill. The abusive enforcement of the law by the competent authorities ANRP and CNCI IV. The extended corruption at al/ leve/s of the administration and justice related to property restitution. The Romanian Authorities on the and the avoided to give relevant answers or even to treat some of the addressed items, as we shall prove in the following document. I. The deliberate delay of the solution of restitution requests by administrative and judicial authorities and the failure to meet the deadlines imposed by law. ln opposition to the official statement in the mentioned answers 2, the Report of the Contrai Corps of the Prime Minister for the period presents a quite different situation3: Taking into account the very low solution rate of the files during the period of. 785 cases/year, one may conclude, that the files h l p ://www. coe. nt/t/ dph / monito r~xecutio n/reports/ pendi ngcases en. asp?case TitleOrN u rnber=s tra i n &StateCode= RO M&SectionCode c:c EN Hfl.NC~ D t SU PE.RVISIO N 2 'L e Gouvernem ent estime que ces informations actualisees renforcent la conclusion q ue le mecanism e mis en place par la L oin , ainsi que le suivi des autorites competentes, o ffrent les premisses necessaires p o ur le bon fo nctionnem ent d u system e de reparation p our les prop rietes nationalisees. " Report 0fthc Comrol Corps of the Prime lvlini ster ~. D ( fisiere/gomunicat DE PRESA V2.doc

3 registered at the ANRP and not yet solved, might be solved in approximatively 24 years, i. e. until 2039, (instead of , as the Law stipulates! ). ln order to meet the deadlines of the law, the competent authorities ANRP and CNCI should salve.688 files/month, while over a duration of approximatively two and a half years, it solved only 2.96 files, which corresponds to 97 files/ month! STAGE OF SOLVING CASES LAW 0/ 200MAY 20, 203- MAY 20, 208 ON M AY 02, 206. The initial time-limit to complete the drawing up the inventory of the land available for restitution was set for 20 December 203. A new time - limit for this stage had been set for the st of January 205, and again postponed. 2. The starting of the auctions should have been organised by videoconference starting from January The local competent authorities should, by January 206 at the latest, have resolved all claims of restitution, issued property titles and ensured that the beneficiaries take possession of their respective property. None of the above deadlines have been met, so that we do not know on which facts the optimism of the ANRP is based (see note 2 on previous page). 4. A new project of law, which has just been promulgated introduces new delays (art. Ill-VI). 5. The government reports the number of analysed files, but analysed is not equal to solved, because numerous files are sent back to the local authorities and from these against back to ANRP/CNCI, or invalidated! The delays in solving the requests have a systematic character, their goal being to exert pressure on owners, in order to determine them to self their rights at derisory prices, to intemediaries sent by the governing party. 2

4 DH-DD(206)749: Rule 9.2 communication from NGOs in the Strain group of cases v. Romania. Documents distributed at the request of a Representative shall be under the sole responsibility of the said Representative, without prejudice to the legal or political position of the Committee of Ministers. / Les documents distribués à la demande d un/e Représentant/e le sont sous la seule responsabilité dudit/de ladite Représentant/e, sans préjuger de la position juridique ou politique du Comité des Ministres. Law nr and its enforcement violates therefore the ECHR recommendations, formulated, e.g., in Pilot Ruling Atanasiu and others, that requests of the entitled persans should be solved within "reasonable " time, as well as the the provisions of art. 6 of the European Convention of Hu man Rights. Il. Entitled persons are discriminated. Ali petitioners registered their requests under the provisions of the former laws (/2000 fonds foncier, 0/ 200 real estate, 247/2005). Ali of them acquired therefore the same rights. Even the Romanian Constitutional Court, stated in a former decision (decision nr. 830/2008), that 4 : «as this interval was not under way at the moment the Law had been promulgated, and had expired, (as it has been shown before), on february 4th 2002, one can state that once performed, the juridical situation has been finalised. That means that al/ the persans having registered their requests within the statutory period are in the same juridical situation, i.e. they got the right for compensations,...». The same reasoning is valid also for all persans, having registered their request within the statutory period for the law 0/200 respectively /2000, therefore their requests shoud be treated according to the provisions of the previous laws (and not those of the new law nr. 65/203) Persans who had the chance that their requests were treated before the issue of the new law no. 65 /203 received back either their confiscated goods, or a compensation equivalent to the market value of these goods. But the great majority of the petitioners, whose requests had not yet been solved, are now discriminated by the new law: instead of their goods they will receive a symbolic compensation in form of points at a much later time, which enable them potentially to participate at an auction for goods. But the list of these has not yet been published. The alternative for them is to wait (between ). For such delays only the authorities should be blamed, and not the petitioners. Oiscrimation is condemned by art. of the 2th Protocol of the E uropean Convention of the Hu man Rights. The Romanian Authorîtîes did not give any answer concernîng this item. 4 Întrucât acest termen nuera in deru lare la momentul intrârii in vigoare a Legii nr. 247/2005. fiin d expirai, a ~a cum s-a arâtat mai sus, la data de 4 februari e 2002, se poate afi rma cà. odatà infàptuita. situatia juridicà respectivà s-a juridicà identicà ~i ~i fina lizat. Prin urmare, toate persoanele care au depus cereri în termen ul legal se aflà în tr-o situatie anume au dobândit vocatia la masuri reparatorii, eu precizarea cà in cazul bu nurilor preluate rarà titlu valabi l persoanele înd reptàtite var benefi cia de restit uirea in naturâ a respect ivelor bunuri. 3

5 Ill. The abusive enforcement of the law by the competent authorities ANRP and CNCl 5 The Law No. 65/203 attributes to the competent administrative authority the right to invalidate existing decisions, which had already been verified by competent autorities. This happens in spite of the fact that such an invalidation should be decided only by a judicial court and not by an administraive unit, otherwise the principle of separation of powers in the state would be breached. From the ANRP reports we see that from a total number of decisions of ANRP/CNCI, 3.333, i.e. 42,40 % were invalidated. Such a high invalidation rate for already checked files by compentent autorities is total/y abusive. Affected petitioners have the possibility to lodge an appeal against invaliation only before one single court of the Tribunal of Bucharest, irrespective of their permanent domicile. This Court is overflowed by cases, therefore hearings are delayed. lt is easy to conclude that such a decision is only a quibble, aimed to delay the solution of the case, to discourage the petitioner and to determine him to sell his rights to intermediaires. Neither this aspect is mentioned in the answers of the Government. IV. The extended corruption at all levels of the administration and justice related to property restitution A special aspect is represented by the corruption inside the coordinating authority ANRP (Autoritatea Nationala pentru Restituirea Proprietatilor). Numerous personalities working with ANRP or strongly related to it have been investigated or even condemned: so for example two former presidents, three former vice-presidents, the former president of the National Agency for lntegrity as well as the former head of division for Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism. Moreover, the National Anti-Corruption Department started criminal proceedings against the whole Central Commission for the Evaluation of Compensations, for having overestimated the value of land properties. ls it admissible, that an institution so deeply compromised as the ANRP be empowered to coordinate the activities of property restitution and have a dominant raie in the elaboration the concerned laws? "The Wolf as keeper of the sheep!" 5 ANRP: Autoritatea Nationala pentru Restituirea Proprietatilor, CNCI Comisia Nationala pentru Compensarea lmobilelor 4

6 According to a report published by the Romanian Court of Auditors to ANRP for the period , persans having bought property rights from dispossessed owners for low amounts have received very huge compensations from the CNCl/ANRP. From the numerous examples mentioned there we quote only the name of a citizen who has paid for such rights about.5 million dollars, while the value of the goods he obtained amounted to 466 million lei, more than OO million 6!. The procedure: intermediaries obtain the addresses of the entitled persans from the competent authorities. They contact these persans, offering them derisory prices of 25-30% of the value of the contract. Facing the alternative to get the money late (or may be never), these persans accept the offer. The examples mentioned above show us that the delay of a solution for property restitution generated and will generate also in the future a large number of cases of corruption and abuse of power. The conclusion is that: The Romanian authorities do not intend seriously to restitute stolen properties Data furnished by the Romanian authorities are sometimes incomplete Asociatia pentru Proprietatea Privata APP 6, Rue Paul Orleanu Bucuresti; bîrouapp@gmail.com Presedinte av. Calin lspravnic Asociatia Proprietarilor Deposedati Abuziv de Stat - APDAS Bucuresti, ancazlatescu@yahoo.com Vicepresedinte Prof. Dr. Anca Zlatescu RESRO - Restitution und Menschenrechte in Rumanien e.v. Germania wvvw.resro.eu Presedinte Karin Decker-That k.decker-that@resro.eu 6 http // _ html 5

7 DGI 0 3 JUIN 206 MINIST l:iu: DES AF FA IRE S ÉT RANGL: RES AGENT DU GOUVERNEMENT AUPRES DE LA COUR EUROPEENNE DES DROITS DE L'HOMME Groupe Strèiin La réponse du Gouvernement à la lettre des organisations nongouvernementales Suite à la lettre du 30 mai 206 concernant des préoccupations soulevées par des organisations non-gouvernementales sur les mesures d'exécution de rarrêt pilote Maria Atanasiu et autres c. Roumanie, le Gouvernement a pris bonne note des problèmes invoquées par lesdites organisations. Le Gouvernement observe qu'une partie des aspects soulevés ont déjà fait robjet des communications de la part du Gouvernement. Concernant d'autres problèmes invoqués, compte tenu de la nécessite de recevoir des informations supplémentaires, le Gouvernement répondra dans une note informative qui sera adressée au Comité des Ministres dans les meilleurs délais. En même temps, le Gouvernement souhaite rappeler que, pour ce qui est des allégations concernant la prétendue discrimination et des délais introduits par la Loi n 65/203, la Cour a déjà confirmé, dans son arrêt Preda et autres c. Roumanie, que les mesures adoptées par la loi susmentionnée, y compris celles contestées par les organisations non-gouvernementales, sont conformes à la Convention. Allée lvlndrngan n'' 4. ICT sectcur Bucarest, Roum anie Tel : Télernpie: + 4(2 ) Courriel JagC"l;nae.rn