issued by the Registrar of the Court
ECHR 370 (2020)
15.12.2020
Judgments of 15 December 2020
The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing six judgments1:
one Chamber judgment is summarised below;
separate press releases have been issued for two other Chamber judgments in the cases of: National
Movement Ekoglasnost v. Bulgaria (application no. 31678/17) and Piskin v. Turkey (no. 33399/18);
three Committee judgments, concerning issues which have already been submitted to the Court, can
be consulted on Hudoc and do not appear in this press release.
The judgment summarised below is available only in English.
Lushkin and Others v. Russia (nos. 29775/14 and 29967/14)
The applicants, Sergey Alekseyevich Lushkin, Svetlana Nikolayevna Lushkina, Aleksandr
Vladimirovich Nagulov, and Olga Kuzminichna Nagulova, are Russian nationals who were born in
1962, 1962, 1950 and 1955 respectively and live in Murmansk Region (Russia). They are two married
couples.
The case concerned an order for the applicants’ eviction from tied accommodation.
Mr Lushkin and Mr Nagulov served in the military. As a result, they and their partners lived in tied
accommodation in a closed town from the 1980s onwards. On retirement in the late 1990s they lost
the right to live in the closed town. In 2006 they took part in a programme run by the municipality
and funded by the State to resettle them elsewhere. The municipality built via a private company a
block of flats in the Leningrad Region, subsequently transferring the ownership rights over the flats
in that block of flats to the applicants. In exchange the applicants undertook to vacate their old flats.
However, the relevant State authority refused to register the applicants as the owners on the
grounds that the block of flats had been built without planning permission.
In 2009 and 2011 the applicants’ ownership was recognised by the courts.
In 2011, in a judgment in abuse-of-office proceedings, the construction of the new flats and the
tendering process were found to have been unlawful, while the applicants’ rights were adjudged to
have been violated in that they couldn’t move to the new flat.
In 2013 the municipality brought eviction proceedings against the applicants. The Polyarnyy District
Court of Murmansk Region ordered that the applicants leave within six months, which was upheld
on appeal. The Supreme Court refused to hear a cassation appeal lodged by the applicants.
The enforcement of the judgment was postponed once by the District Court, which refused to
postpone it further in 2014. The applicants are still in their old flats.
Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for the home) of the European Convention on Human Rights,
the applicants complained that the eviction order had breached their rights.
1
Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, Chamber judgments are not final. During the three-month period following a Chamber
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: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution - _blank
