issued by the Registrar of the Court
ECHR 133 (2017)
18.04.2017
Judgment of 18 April 2017
The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing one Chamber judgment1,
summarized below. This judgment is available only in English.
Valančienė v. Lithuania (application no. 2657/10)
The applicant, Adelė Valančienė, is a Lithuanian national who was born in 1940 and lives in Plungė
(Lithuania). She complained that the State had violated her right to the protection of property under
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights. In the early 1990s the
authorities started taking actions to restore the property rights of Ms Valančienė’s late husband to a
plot of land that had been nationalised in 1940. The authorities ruled that the same land could not
be returned, but offered the transfer of a new plot or monetary compensation. Ms Valančienė’s
husband and (after his death in 2005) Ms Valančienė herself requested that the same plot of land be
restored, or that they receive a plot of equivalent value. They repeatedly refused the authorities’
offers of a transfer of another plot, on the grounds that the plots offered to them in exchange were
not in fact of an equivalent value. Eventually in 2007 the local District Land Service found that Ms
Valančienė had refused to indicate a preferred form of restitution, and decided to restore her
property rights by making a payment of monetary compensation. She challenged this decision in
court, but she was unsuccessful. She complained in particular that the State had violated her
property rights by refusing to restore to her the same plot of land or give her a plot of truly
equivalent value, and that the amount of compensation she had been granted was too low.
No violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court. Decisions,
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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member
States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.
1
Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, Chamber judgments are not final. During the three-month period following a judgment’s
delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five
judges considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final
judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day. Under Article 28 of the Convention,
judgments delivered by a Committee are final.
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution.
Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution