Ghadira landowners win damages but not right to take back land

A group of 26 Maltese nationals have been awarded €150,000 in damages by the European Court of Human Rights over the expropriation of their land in Mellieha and its grant to a private company in 1992.

The applicants owned stakes in almost 4,000sq.m of land in Għadira Bay, Mellieha, when this was expropriated in the late 1950s while other plots in the area were being taken for coastal development. In 1992 part of the land was granted to a company under a beach concession.

The applicants insisted that the land was expropriated without a public interest at stake and that they had not been paid compensation.

The applicants took legal steps over the years to try and recover their land, including constitutional proceedings which began in 2009. In 2015, a superior court found a breach of their property rights, awarding them €20,000 in damages, but 58 years after the expropriation the applicants had still not received a deed of transfer or any compensation.

The origins of the expropriation occurred in 1954, when the property was being rented out as a caravan site.

In 1957, the land was expropriated together with other pieces of land as part of the Għadira Scheme, a project aimed at extending the sandy beach to allow for more access to the sea for swimming purposes.

Over the years, until 1973, the applicants repeatedly made attempts, to no avail, to recover their property, explaining that they were willing to put in place a beach concession.

But in 1992, part of this land was given to a private company, under a beach concession allowing for encroachment for just Lm200 annually, until 2006.

The applicants took legal steps, unsuccessfully, in 1992.

In 2006, a fresh beach concession was announced at €16,000 (Lm7,000) – the original company continued to use the property on an annual encroachment fee of Lm1 (€2.33) per sq.m and €4.66 per sq.m as management contribution.

In 2009, the owners filed a constitutional case requesting the return of the land and compensation, arguing that they had been deprived of their property while others made commercial profits at their expense. They were awarded damages in 2015, however the court said it had not been proven that the land had originally been taken to build a road, which plan never came to be.

Instead, the property had been expropriated for the purposes of tourism and economic development at the Mellieha beach, and so the court decided that the fact that the land was given for a beach concession did not detract from the public interest of the expropriation.

The court also said the fact that owners had waited until 2009 to take constitutional action, weakened their case, and considered that it should not order the return of the land to the applicants.

The decision was confirmed on appeal by a Constitutional Court, yet by 2019 the Lands Authority had not instituted any compensation proceedings.

The ECHR also said that the expropriation under the Għadira Scheme was in the public interest, and that the fact that around 10% of the expropriated land was granted on concession, did not detract from the public interest.

The applicants insisted that the land was worth well over €4 million, by way of commercial losses suffered over 62 years – the area can take up to 270 beach beds a day at a daily income of €2,700 over some 168 days every year and at 80% occupancy. The government insisted that the value of the land was actually €185,000, since in 1957 the land was agricultural in nature. The Strasbourg court decided on a €150,000 compensation.

The applicants were represented in court by lawyers Joseph Gatt and Albert Libreri.