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969 16.12.2009   Press release issued by the Registrar   FORTHCOMING GRAND CHAMBER JUDGMENTS   22 December 2009   The European Court of Human Rights will deliver two Grand Chamber judgments in the cases of Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (application nos. 27996/06 and 34836/06) and Guiso-Gallisay v. Italy (no. 58858/00) in a public hearing on Tuesday 22 December 2009, at, respectively, 11 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. (local time) in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg.   The press releases and texts of the judgments will be available after the hearings on the Court’s Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).   ****   Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina   The applicants, Dervo Sejdić and Jakob Finci, are citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They were born in 1956 and 1943 respectively and live in Sarajevo. The former is of Roma origin and the latter is a Jew. They are both prominent public figures. The Bosnian Constitution, in its Preamble, makes a distinction between two categories of citizens: the so-called “constituent peoples” (Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs) and “others” (Jews, Roma and other national minorities together with those who do not declare affiliation with any ethnic group). The House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly (the second chamber) and the Presidency are composed only of persons belonging to the three constituent peoples. Mr Jakob Finci enquired with the Central Election Commission about his intentions to stand for election to the Presidency and the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly. On 3 January 2007 he received a written confirmation from the Central Election Commission that he was ineligible to stand to such elections because of his Jewish origin.   The applicants complain because, despite possessing experience comparable to the highest elected officials, they are prevented by the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the corresponding provisions of the Election Act 2001, from being candidates for the Presidency and the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly solely on the ground of their ethnic origins. They invoke Articles 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment), 13 (right to an effective remedy) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (right to free elections) and Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 (general prohibition of discrimination) to the Convention.   The applications were lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 3 July and 18 August 2006 respectively. On 10 February 2009, the Chamber before which the case was pending decided to relinquish jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber pursuant to Article 30 of the Convention. The Venice Commission, the AIRE Centre and the Open Society Justice Initiative have been authorised to intervene as third parties pursuant to Article 36 of the Convention. A public hearing was held at the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, on 3 June 2009.     Guiso-Gallisay v. Italy   The applicants are three Italian nationals: Stefano Guiso-Gallisay, Gian Francesco Guiso-Gallisay and Antonella Guiso-Gallisay who were born in 1959, 1948 and 1952 respectively. In 1977, the Italian Administration occupied the land that the applicants owned in Nuoro (Sardinia) with a view to its expropriation and began to develop it. In the absence of any formal expropriation accompanied by compensation, the applicants brought proceedings seeking damages for the unlawful occupation of their land.   They allege that the occupation of their land had infringed their right to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions, guaranteed by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) to the European Convention on Human Rights.   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 7 April 2000 and declared admissible on 2 September 2004.   In a judgment of 8 December 2005, the Court held that the interference with the applicants’ right to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions through the indirect expropriation of their land was incompatible with the principle of legality and that there had accordingly been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. It also held that the question of the application of Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention was not ready for decision.   The judgment on just satisfaction was delivered on 21 October 2008 when the Court decided to vary its case-law on application of Article 41 in the case of indirect expropriation. The method used hitherto was to compensate for losses that would not be covered by payment of a sum obtained by adding the market value of the property to the cost of not deriving earnings from the property, by automatically assessing those losses as the gross value of the works carried out by the State plus the value of the land in today’s prices. However, the Court considered that this method of compensation was not justified and could lead to unequal treatment between applicants, depending on the nature of the public works carried out by the public authorities, which was not necessarily linked to the potential of the land in its original state. In order to assess the loss sustained by the applicants, it therefore decided that the date on which they had established with legal certainty that they had lost the right of ownership over the property concerned should be taken into consideration. The total market value of the property fixed on that date by the national courts was then to be adjusted for inflation and increased by the amount of interest due on the date of the judgment’s adoption by the Court. The sum paid to applicants by the authorities of the country concerned was to be deducted from the resulting amount. In the present case, the sum awarded for pecuniary damage amounted to 1,803,374 euros (EUR) for the three applicants jointly. The Court also awarded them EUR 45,000 for non-pecuniary damage and EUR 30,000 for costs and expenses.   On 26 January the case was referred to the Grand Chamber at the applicants’ request. A public hearing was held at the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, on 17 June 2009.     ***   Press contacts Stefano Piedimonte (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 04) or Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) Kristina Pencheva-Malinowski (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 70) Céline Menu-Lange (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 90 21 58 77) Frédéric Dolt (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 90 21 53 39) Nina Salomon (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 49 79)   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.