By Aikaterini Tsampi and Eleni Micha[1]
On 8 October 2024, in Micha v Greece (Application No. 13991/20),[2] the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR/Court) found that the Greek State’s persistent restrictions on the applicants’ land, and its failure to act despite favorable domestic judgments, breached their right to a fair trial (Article 6(1), European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)) and their right to an effective remedy in conjunction with the peaceful enjoyment of their property (Articles 13 and 1 of Protocol No. 1, ECHR).
Micha could be seen as yet another Greek case raising issues of fair trial and protection of property,[3] but the present analysis suggests that there is more to it. The following sections will briefly present the case to preface the discussion on what Micha reveals on the topic of the margin of appreciation afforded to States, as well as the role of good faith in the execution of ECtHR judgments, such as the one at hand.
1. Micha v. Greece in a nutshell: A case of disobedient administration
It was in 1998 when the use of the applicants’ land in Agia Paraskevi—a municipality in the wider Attica region of Greece—was first restricted. Following an expropriation process, the local council proposed an amendment to the urban development plan reclassifying their plots as a green area in order to create an open space with a park. The Secretary General of the Attica region approved the plan. The applicants objected on the basis of procedural and other legal deficits of the decision, but to no avail. In 2003, the applicants lodged a complaint before the Hellenic Council of State to request the annulment of the relevant administrative act. The Council of State annulled the said act in 2015, that is, 12 years later (Judgment No 720/2015). However, the local authorities did not execute the judgment and continued blocking the properties by refusing to issue a building permit or award compensation as provided by the domestic legislation. In 2018, the Special Committee of the Council of State, tasked with overseeing the implementation of the same court’s decisions, ordered that the authorities either complete the expropriation process by awarding compensation or lift the restrictions on the properties. However, this decision was again ignored with the applicants being unable to use or sell their property for over 20 years. It is under these circumstances that the Court found a violation of the right to a fair trial, following the non-execution of the judgments of the Supreme Administrative Court (Micha, para. 40), and the lack of an effective remedy to compel the local authorities to conform with the domestic judgments that refer to the applicants’ properties (para. 50).
2.The rocky road to execution
The aforementioned conclusions of the Court do not come as a surprise. Yet, what deserves special attention in Micha is the question of its execution, especially since it qualifies as a case concerning the protection of property rights, where member States have a wide margin of appreciation in determining how to execute the Court’s judgments. But how far can that margin reasonably extend, especially when a State’s good faith in the execution process is questioned?
2.1. Between a wide and narrow margin of appreciation in property cases
Micha is one of those cases that showcases the intricacies of the execution of judgment procedure especially when systemic problems concerning the protection of property enter the fray. In Micha, the Court seems to be giving Greece yet another grace period to address issues that have preoccupied it in the past in cases where local authorities refused to comply with domestic court judgments ordering the lifting of land expropriation orders. Triggering Article 46 ECHR (Binding force and execution of judgments), the Court, in Micha (paras. 62ff), proposed certain measures that could potentially solve cases like the one at hand. The Court further acknowledged that it “cannot be more precise or prescriptive as to the measures that the defendant State can take to, effectively, comply with the present judgment” (emphasis added, para. 71). Even so, the Court recognized the State’s margin of appreciation and gave leeway to Greece to choose among a number of execution measures, i.e., lifting expropriation decisions in accordance with domestic judgments, paying compensation, or acquiring the properties concerned.
Unsurprisingly, the Court referred the examination of further measures to the Committee of Ministers (CM), since it recognized that the case at hand was part of a recurring problem in the Greek legal order, related to the lifting of property restrictions and compliance with domestic court judgments. Thus, it linked Micha to the “Kanellopoulos” group (para. 66), a number of other similar cases already under the supervision of CM. This is the Court’s standard practice aiming to prevent the recurrence of similar violations with a view to achieve a full, effective and prompt execution of its judgments (para. 64).
Greece has already tried to address the structural problem of ‘property blocking’ or de facto deprivation of property by adopting Law 4759/2020, which entered into force ten months after the application was filed before the Court. The fact that the Court in Micha found itself between two different legislative phases (pre- and post-Law 4759) raised further complexities, especially since this “new law” (i.e., Law 4759) was—and still is—under scrutiny by the CM. In Micha, what seemed to be determinative was that the Court regarded Law 4759 as an effective remedy for all such cases of property blocking, irrespective of the date that the law entered into force. Besides, the CM itself viewed the Law as a significant step towards a full-fledged execution and further implementation of the Court’s judgments (see Micha, para. 68).
Yet, one must question the reasonableness of characterizing this legislation as either “new” or substantively positive. After all, the law has been in force for four years, and is—according to the State’s own interpretation—inapplicable to the facts of Micha given its lack of retroactive application.
However, it seems that neither the Court nor the CM had this understanding: as the new law provides, it applies even in cases of past expropriations declared under the old regime but not carried out. Besides, there is still a pending task for the Greek authorities to address, one already posed by the CM in its September 2024 Decision, i.e., to provide tangible evidence that the new law applies to concrete cases. Whether Law 4759 will finally resolve the issue in Micha remains an open question for the CM to answer (among others) and will have wider repercussions for its application.
Certainly, one should acknowledge that despite the referral to the CM, the Court did not give Greece a carte blanche. Instead, it left the window open for finding further violations, if the 2020 law is not implemented in accordance with certain measures, already adopted in similar cases, accompanied by additional compensation based on the delay in enforcing the domestic judicial decisions and the lack of an effective remedy. This is a crucial point of the Court’s reasoning, as it seems to restrict the State’s margin of appreciation regarding the mode of restitution due in Micha. This is even more so regarding the amount of compensation due in case the domestic authorities decide to proceed with the expropriation. As the Court has already indicated in case of repetitive violations, the respondent States must first and foremost either remove all obstacles to the effective exercise of the right in question, or, failing that, provide appropriate redress enabling the applicants to secure compensation reasonably related to the market value of the property (Maria Atanasiu and Others v. Romania, Applications Nos 30767/05 and 33800/06, 2010, para. 231; Krasteva and Others v. Bulgaria, Application No 5334/11, 2017, para. 34).
Swinging between wide and narrower margin of appreciation in Micha, the Court tried to find a fair balance between the two. However, is this really the point? In our eyes, Micha raises the question of the respondent State’s good faith in the execution of judgments.
Photo by Adrian Grycuk, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 PL
2.2. Between good and bad faith in execution of ECtHR judgments
It is common ground that the entire ECtHR system is based on good faith. As far as the execution of judgments is concerned, the Court has clearly held in Kavala v. Türkiye (Application No. 28749/18, 2022) that “the execution of judgments should also involve good faith and take place in a manner compatible with the ‘conclusions and spirit’ of the judgment” (paras. 169-170).
Admittedly, Kavala was a rare and politically charged instance of infringement in which the Court explicitly confronted a Member State’s systemic defiance of its authority, implicating core rule of law violations. By contrast, the present case of Micha has not been framed in such terms and does not overtly concern a breakdown of the constitutional order. Even so, it is difficult to understand how the Court can treat Micha as a routine matter, given its prolonged duration and the serious issues it raises regarding the separation of powers—particularly the State’s failure to enforce domestic judicial decisions. While Micha may not qualify as a textbook rule of law case, it has been characterized a leading one by the CM, since it arises from systemic deficiencies that have long been under its enhanced supervision and which continue to undermine the effectiveness of the ECHR system.
The silence of the Court (Hochmann, p. 98) regarding the proper measures to be taken in each case to implement its judgments favors States that have bad faith and does not help States that demonstrate good faith. Thus, the discretion of the Court seems to contradict its previous case law, where it concluded that “the applicants [are] entitled to expect that the national authorities, courts included, would give effect in good faith to the undertakings given by the Government in proceedings before the Court” (Willems and Gorjon v. Belgium, Application Nos 74209/16 et al., 2021, paras. 54-66). In Micha, we can distinguish the bad faith of the domestic administrative authorities, as they not only failed to pay compensation due for over 20 years, but they did not even proceed to finish the entire project to turn the applicants’ land into a green belt area that would allegedly be beneficial to public interest. Eventually, this lack of consistency from the domestic authorities “contradicts the principle of good governance which requires that the public authorities act in good time, in an appropriate manner and with the utmost consistency” (Jewish Community of Thessaloniki v. Greece, Application No 13959/20, 2025, para. 78).
3. Micha v. Greece: So close, yet so far
Ultimately, Micha could qualify as an intermediate case somewhere between good and bad faith. The Court’s implementation of Article 46 ECHR should better reflect this. With the “new law’s” ratione temporis remaining ambiguous and the Committee of Ministers offering Greece time until 30 June 2026 to submit updated information on all the outstanding issues, Micha’s applicants will have to wait yet again—as they have since 2003—for “a full, effective and prompt execution” (para. 64). It remains to be seen whether the mode of execution to be proposed by the Greek authorities, whenever this happens, will satisfy the high standards set by the Court and the Committee of Ministers.
Dr. Katerina Tsampi is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research interests span across a wide range of human rights issues with emphasis on the European Convention of Human Rights.
Dr. Eleni Micha is the applicant and the lawyer in the case under discussion. She specializes in public international law; her particular interest is international protection of human rights, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. She currently holds a teaching post at the School of Law of the University of Athens. She is also Visiting Lecturer at Frederick University in Cyprus. She is an attorney-at-law at the Athens Bar Association. Her expertise is on human rights litigation mainly before the European Court of Human Rights.
[1] Disclaimers: E. Micha is the applicant and the lawyer in the case under discussion; the citations of the Court in quotation marks belong to the authors as the original language of the judgment itself is French.
[2] For the summary of the judgment in English, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre-press?i=003-8056591-11258493
[3] Press Country Profile, https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/CP_Greece_ENG
Featured image is of an interior view of the European Court of Human Rights building, photo credit: Council of Europe