Court awards €40,904.51 compensation after finding that Malta's controlled tenancy laws violated owners' peaceful enjoyment of property under ECHR Protocol 1.
First Hall of the Civil Court (Constitutional Jurisdiction) · The Honourable Judge Henri Mizzi · 30 April 2026
Twenty co-owners of two amalgamated properties at Dante 67 and Tasso 69, Triq Sir William Reid, Il-Gżira, brought constitutional proceedings against the Maltese State arguing that the operation of controlled tenancy legislation — specifically Chapter 158 of the Laws of Malta — had violated their fundamental property rights. The properties had been granted under a temporary sub-emphyteusis in 1989 for 21 years at an annual rent equivalent to €349.40, but when that title expired in 2010, the occupant Filomena Camilleri remained in possession by automatic operation of law rather than by any new agreement. The applicants argued that from 2010 until the remedial amendments introduced by Act XXVII of 2018, they were trapped in a legally imposed tenancy relationship with virtually no means of reclaiming possession and with rent bearing no relationship to market value. A court-appointed architect, Perit Michael Lanfranco, assessed the open-market rental value of the property across the relevant period, concluding that by 2022 it was worth €500,000 with an annual market rent of €15,000 — compared to the €350 per year actually received. The court, applying extensive Strasbourg and Maltese constitutional jurisprudence, found that between 26 June 2010 and 10 July 2018 (when the 2018 remedial Act came into force), the State had failed to maintain a fair balance between the general interest of protecting tenants and the applicants' property rights under Article 1 of the First Protocol of the ECHR. Three factors were decisive: the uncertainty as to when possession could be recovered; the inability to raise rent to reflect economic reality; and the absence of adequate procedural safeguards before 2018. The court awarded total compensation of €40,904.51, comprising €36,883.96 in pecuniary damages (calculated from market rental values less 30% for the social purpose of the measure, 20% for the possibility the property might not have been rented anyway, and minus rent actually received) and €4,020.55 in non-pecuniary moral damages at the standard rate of approximately €500 per year of violation. The State Advocate was ordered to pay both the compensation and legal costs. The court declined to add a 5% interest uplift applied by the ECtHR in Cauchi v Malta, noting that experts' figures already account for inflation and that compensation is tax-free.
The First Hall of the Civil Court (Constitutional Jurisdiction) declared a violation of Article 1 of the First Protocol of the ECHR for the period 26 June 2010 to 10 July 2018. The State Advocate was ordered to pay: (1) pecuniary damages of €36,883.96; (2) non-pecuniary (moral) damages of €4,020.55; total €40,904.51 plus legal interest from the date of judgment and all costs of the proceedings. No finding was made under Article 37 of the Constitution as a remedy under ECHR Protocol 1 was sufficient.
Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights; Article 37 of the Constitution of Malta; Chapter 158 (Reletting of Urban Property (Regulation) Ordinance), particularly Article 12(2) and Article 12B; Act XXIII of 1979; Act X of 2009; Act XXVII of 2018