VASSALLO proti Maltě

FOURTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 37022/20
Joseph VASSALLO and Antonia VASSALLO
against Malta

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 24 June 2025 as a Committee composed of:

Faris Vehabović, President,
Lorraine Schembri Orland,
Sebastian Răduleţu, judges,
and Veronika Kotek, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 37022/20) against the Republic of Malta lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 20 August 2020 by two Maltese and Canadian dual nationals, Mr Joseph Vassallo and Ms Antonia Vassallo (“the applicants”), who were born in 1944 and 1950 respectively, live in Scarborough Ontario and were represented by Dr M. Camilleri and Dr E. Debono, lawyers practising in Valletta;

the decision to give notice of the complaints concerning Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention alone and in conjunction with Article 13 of the Convention to the Maltese Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Dr C. Soler, State Advocate, and Dr J. Vella, Advocate at the Office of the State Advocate, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The case concerns a unilaterally imposed lease under Act XXIII of 1979 amending Chapter 158 of the Laws of Malta (‘the Ordinance’), at a low rent, affecting the applicants’ property in Siġġiewi as of 1 May 2012. At that time the rent payable was 725 euros (EUR) annually, which would increase every three years according to the index of inflation. In 2012 the applicants attempted to evict the tenants via proceedings before the Rent Regulation Board (‘RRB’) to no avail. In 2018 the applicants again unsuccessfully asked the tenants to vacate the property and pay damages. In 2018 the payable rent amounted to around EUR 750 annually.

2. On 26 February 2018 the applicants instituted constitutional redress proceedings complaining of a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. The market rental value of the property according to the court‑appointed expert was EUR 6,183 in 2012 and EUR 9,800 in 2018.

3. By a judgment of 30 January 2020, the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and awarded EUR 15,000 in compensation for both pecuniary and non‑pecuniary damage. It refused to evict the tenants but ordered that they may no longer rely on Article 12 of the Ordinance to maintain title to the property. No costs were to be paid by the applicants. None of the parties appealed.

4. In the meantime, in 2018 proceedings were instituted before the RRB in light of the 2018 amendments to the Ordinance (see Cauchi v. Malta, no. 14013/19, § 22, 25 March 2021). By a judgment of 28 July 2021, the tenants having failed the means test (introduced via the 2018 amendments to the Ordinance), their eviction was ordered within five years, during which time the RRB fixed a rent of EUR 1,501 annually (double the rent previously in place) as of the date of that judgment, as provided for by Article 12B (4) of the Ordinance as amended by the 2018 amendments.

5. Given the enactment of the 2021 amendments (the Controlled Residential Leases Reform Act which came into force on 1 June 2021 – therefore before the judgment in their case) amending Article 12B of the Ordinance to allow the eviction of the tenant within two years, as opposed to five years, and to impose a rent which is not limited by 2% of the open market value, the applicants appealed requesting the RRB to apply the amended law, the provisions of which had immediate effect (Article 12B (4) and (10) as amended in 2021).

6. On 21 April 2023, the Court of Appeal rejected the applicants’ appeal. It considered that when lodging their case, the applicants had relied on the law as applicable in 2018, and that the defendants had the right to know under which parameters their case would be decided. Thus, despite the law saying otherwise, the Court of Appeal considered that it should not apply the 2021 amendments. The applicants could nonetheless institute fresh proceedings before the RRB should they consider that the tenants’ financial situation had changed.

7. When lodging the application in August 2020 the applicants complained under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention alone and in conjunction with Article 13 that they remained victims of the violation upheld by the domestic court due to the low amount of compensation awarded and the failure to evict the tenants.

8. At a later stage the applicants complained that despite the increase in rent in accordance with the Court of Appeal judgment, which they still considered insufficient, the applicants have not managed to obtain the increased rent from the tenants.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

9. The Court observes that the applicants’ complaints concerning the 2018 amendments were declared inadmissible by the President of the Section acting in a single-judge formation at communication stage (see Rule 27A § 2 (a) and Rule 54 §§ 2 (b) and 3 of the Rules of Court). It follows that the scope of this case is limited to the situation as examined by the Civil Court (First Hall) in its constitutional competence, in its judgment of 30 January 2020 (see paragraph 3 above), without prejudice to the applicants’ position as affected by the RRB judgment confirmed by the Court of Appeal (see paragraphs 4-6 above) which fall out of the scope of the Court’s scrutiny in the present case.

10. While the Government raised an objection of lack of victim status in respect of the complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, the Court considers that it is not necessary to examine this objection given that the entirety of the application is inadmissible for the following reasons.

11. Firstly, the Court dismisses the Government’s objection of non‑exhaustion of domestic remedies (in so far as the applicants had not appealed to the Constitutional Court). The Court has already held that the change in the Constitutional Court’s practice, which lead to it being considered an effective remedy in 2021, must have become public knowledge only on 30 July 2021 (see Rizzo and Others v. Malta, no. 36318/21, § 59, 16 January 2024). Given the relevant timeline in the present case, the applicants could not have been expected to lodge an appeal to the Constitutional Court prior to that date, that is, in February 2020 when the time-limit to appeal the first-instance judgment in their respect expired (see, for illustrative purposes, Bugeja v. Malta [Committee], no. 51379/20, § 7, 9 July 2024).

12. Secondly, the Court considers that it is necessary to examine the timeliness of the application lodged with the Court. In this connection, the Court points out that it is not open to it to set aside the application of this rule solely because the respondent Government have not made a preliminary objection to that effect (see Blečić v. Croatia [GC], no. 59532/00, § 68, ECHR 2006‑III, and Peňaranda Soto v. Malta, no. 16680/14, § 43, 19 December 2017, and the case‑law cited therein).

13. The Court observes that before the entry into force of Protocol No. 15 to the Convention (1 August 2021), Article 35 § 1 of the Convention referred to a period of six months, from the final domestic decision, within which an applicant could lodge an application with the Court. Article 4 of Protocol No. 15 has amended Article 35 § 1 to reduce the period from six to four months. According to the transitional provisions of the Protocol (Article 8 § 3), this amendment applies only after a period of six months following the entry into force of the Protocol (as from 1 February 2022), in order to allow potential applicants to become fully aware of the new deadline. Furthermore, the new time-limit does not have a retroactive effect, since it does not apply to applications in respect of which the final decision within the meaning of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention was taken prior to the date of entry into force of the new rule (see the Explanatory Report to Protocol No. 15, § 22) (see Pasquinelli and Others v. San Marino, no. 24622/22, § 46, 29 August 2024). It follows that the time-limit applicable in the present case is that of six months.

14. As a rule, the six-month period runs from the date of the final decision in the process of exhaustion of domestic remedies (see Blokhin v. Russia [GC], no. 47152/06, § 106, 23 March 2016). In the present case the final (in the absence of an appeal) decision in the present case is dated 30 January 2020 (see paragraph 3 above). It follows that the six months would have come to an end on 30 July 2020.

15. The Court has already noted that, in the meantime, on 11 March 2020 the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency of international concern – the highest level of alarm – in relation to the global outbreak of a new infectious and mostly respiratory disease (subsequently called COVID-19) caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (see Zambrano v. France (dec.), no. 41994/21, § 3, 21 September 2021). In the light of those developments, on 16 March and 9 April 2020 the President of the Court announced a number of exceptional measures to allow applicants, High Contracting Parties and the Court to handle the difficulties to which the global pandemic and widespread lockdown gave rise.[1] One effect of those measures, which were decided by the President in the exercise of his competence to direct the work and the administration of the Court under Rule 9 of the Rules of Court, was that the Registry of the Court, when registering newly received applications, and without prejudice to any subsequent judicial decision on the matter, was to add three months in total to the method of calculation of the six-month rule under Article 35 § 1 of the Convention whenever a calendar six-month period either started to run or, on the contrary, was due to expire at any time between 16 March and 15 June 2020 (see Saakashvili v. Georgia (dec.), nos. 6232/20 and 22394/20, § 49, 1 March 2022).

16. In Saakashvili, in the exercise of its functions under Articles 19 and 32 of the Convention, weighing the legal considerations behind the six‑month rule under Article 35 § 1 against the need to preserve the cornerstone of the Convention mechanism under Article 34, the Court confirmed that to achieve this balance, the running of the six-month period could legitimately be considered to have been suspended during the most critical phase of the global pandemic (ibid., § 55). Relying on its interpretive jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Convention, the Court concluded that, in order to preserve the right of individual petition during the outbreak of the global pandemic, the method of calculation of the six-month rule had to be adjusted to the reality of that crisis. It followed that if a calendar six-month period either started to run or was due to expire during the time frame specified in the decisions of the President of the Court (from 16 March until and including 15 June 2020), the six-month rule under Article 35 § 1 of the Convention was to be exceptionally considered to have been suspended for three calendar months in total (ibid., §§ 56-57). In that case, where the six months were due to expire on 1 April 2020, and the latter date fell within the time frame indicated by the President (16 March-15 June 2020), the Court ruled that the applicant had an additional three months – until and including 1 July 2020 – to lodge an application with the Court (ibid., § 59).

17. Similar considerations were made in X and Others v. Ireland (nos. 23851/20 and 24360/20, § 58, 22 June 2023), Koilova and Babulkova v. Bulgaria (no. 40209/20, § 25, 5 September 2023), and Validity Foundation on behalf of T.J. v. Hungary (no. 31970/20, § 57, 10 October 2024).

18. However, where the situation was one where, as in the present case, the six-month period neither started to run, nor expired, during the period of suspension, which coincided to the most critical phase of the global pandemic, but solely continued to run, the exceptional measures were not applicable, it thus declared inadmissible as being out-of-time the complaints in respect of the applicants concerned (see Kitanovska and Barbulovski v. North Macedonia, nos. 53030/19 and 31378/20, § 40, 9 May 2023, and Masse v. France (dec.), no. 47506/20, §§ 30-32, 25 March 2025).

19. The Court observes that in the present case the six-month period started to run on 30 January 2020 and expired on 30 July 2020 (see paragraph 14 above), and that those dates do not fall within the above‑mentioned period (16 March-15 June 2020 – see paragraphs 15-16 above). In the absence of anything being brought to the Court’s attention which could justify a departure from the above-mentioned precedents, the Court considers that the present application, lodged on 20 August 2020, was lodged out of time and must therefore be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 28 August 2025.

Veronika Kotek Faris Vehabović
Acting Deputy Registrar President

[1] See the press releases issued by the Registrar of the Court on 16 March and 16 April 2020.