The main reasons for Romania receiving convictions from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) are the property rights and the laborious enforcement of the court’s decisions, according to Razvan-Horatiu Radu, a government agent at ECHR. The country has to pay EUR 3.6 million for its ECHR convictions in 2010. In 2008 and 2009 Romania had to pay EUR 12 million for the lost trials at ECHR.

ECHR has given Romania a deadline until July 2012 concerning the restitution of the nationalized properties by the Romanian state. Being asked what will happen if Romania will not succeed to solve this issue according to the deadline, Razvan-Horatiu Radu said that probably ECHR will effectively bombard Romania with a series of convictions, many more than in the past years.

Still, the government agent said that a law project in this area is being drafted and that the National Agency of Property Rights, as the responsible side of this cause, and the Finance Ministry will play an important part in the success of this law project.

Bucharest has an array of buildings with a long historical background. The problem is that many of these buildings suffer from a constant degradation as time passes because either their former owners do not ask the Romanian state to return their properties, or the trials take a long time. Calea Mosilor, Calea Calarasi and the old city center are full of these kind of buildings that survived the danger of demolition during the communist spell.

Vlad Condurache