Acts of Expropriation in Albania, the Deadline for Filing a Lawsuit in Court, and Dilemmas That Have Been Noticed in Albanian Judicial Jurisprudence
Acts of Expropriation in Albania, the Deadline for Filing a Lawsuit in Court, and Dilemmas That Have Been Noticed in Albanian Judicial Jurisprudence

Author(s): Etien Isak, Elidjana Bregu
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Udruženje ekonomista i menadžera Balkana
Keywords: Expropriation; Property right; Expropriation remuneration; The right to a fair process; Access to the court
Summary/Abstract: Expropriation is an extraordinary manner of limiting ownership, based on which the ownership of properties passes from private to public ownership, so using this limitation of ownership, the owner is completely deprived of ownership of his property. For this reason, expropriation is provided directly in Article 41 of the Constitution of the Republic of Albania. This article guarantees every natural/legal person the right to fair remuneration and the right to contest the value of such remuneration in court. According to Albanian law, the Council of Ministers issue the expropriation act, while the affected subjects have the right to file a lawsuit in the competent Administrative Court. Such an act of expropriation can be challenged judicially only in terms of the remuneration the Council of Ministers granted. Regarding the exercise of the constitutional right of judicial appeal toward the value of the expropriation determined through the relevant act of expropriation, there have been different interpretations in Albanian judicial practice. These interpretations differ about when the owners are notified of the final act of expropriation, which determines the value of fair remuneration. The interpretation regarding the moment of the beginning of the term to file a lawsuit against the value of the remuneration appears to be very important for guaranteeing the right of access to the court, considering that this right is guaranteed by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The different interpretations of the courts on the access of the plaintiffs to oppose the value of remunerations of the expropriation created many problems with the conventional right of access to the courts until the Administrative Panel of the High Court of Law unified a fair interpretation following the conventional right for access to the court.

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