Court Battles To Halt Maltese Countryside From Turning Into Unsightly Picnic Pads Teeter In The Balance
An appeal filed on 18th August against an eviction order served on farmers who have cultivated land in Żabbar for decades is set to give respite to the despair of dozens of farmers facing demands for eviction or exorbitant raises in ground rent. The appeal, prepared by the lawyer Larry Formosa, seeks to revoke the eviction judgement, possibly a prelude to a wider court battle on the proportionality or constitutionality of eviction in these case.
Farmers who lease fields have been on tenterhooks since two seminal judgements of the constitutional courts last year, and the eviction served on the Żabbar farmers three weeks ago – the first of its sort – has turned anxiety into despair among farmers.
Malcolm Borg, coordinator of the NGO Ghaqda Bdiewa Attivi that is funding the appeal, told Lovin Malta that the agricultural sector is facing “its greatest problem ever.”
For landowners, eviction of farmers opens the way for selling plots within fields to people who seek picnic or recreation pads in the countryside. Demand has risen so much that the more valuable of these fields – the ones that lie adjacent to the road or have a room and a view – now fetch hundreds of thousands.
Some parts of the landscape are already being fragmented by such plots, taking the form of boxed-in fields harbouring makeshift constructions (that have the potential to gradually grow into rooms), netting for privacy, even caravans parked in the fields.
The court appeal seeks to overturn the judgement on a point of procedure, even arguing that the summary eviction is in breach of the stipulation that farmers whose lease is terminated have to be reimbursed for improvements or works they carried out in the fields. The implication is that the eviction infringed on the farmers’ rights.
If the appeal prevails, the substantive legal arguments that led to the eviction order in the first place would have to be thrashed out in further or other proceedings.
Legal sources consulted by Lovin Malta maintained that the Żabbar case did not deserve to end in eviction because the issue is proportionality between ground rent and price of land – and eviction is on another scale.
The litigation was over a field amounting to 5,620 square metres that has been rented out to Nazzareno and Antonia Pulis for decades. The Pulis’ are both 72 and they were already leaseholders when the present owners, J&C Properties Limited, bought the land in 1982.
The Pulis’ have been paying €58.23 annually in ground rent under terms of a law dating to 1967. The law specifies that the lease can only be terminated if the owner would want to cultivate the fields himself or have a development permit in hand, or if the farmer fails to maintain rubble walls or cultivate the fields for two consecutive years.
The legal battle started when the owners, J&C Properties, filed a lawsuit in the constitutional court arguing that the automatic renewal of the lease at an unchangeable price breached their property rights under terms of the Maltese Constitution as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.
Court-appointed architects valued the land at €845,000, and the lower constitutional court presided by judge Joseph Zammit McKeon held that the law breached the owner’s right to the enjoyment of their property given the low yearly rent, of €58.23, and their inability to raise the rent or terminate the lease.
McKeon argued that social mobility since the 1960s had diluted the law’s legitimate aim – hence weakened the justification for restriction of the owners’ property rights – and the rapid rise in the value of land had skewed the proportionality between annual rent and price of land. He held that this amounted to a breach of the owners’ property rights, and awarded them €100,000 in damages.
The higher constitutional court, on appeal, disagreed with the valuation of the land and lowered the damages to €22,000.
The constitutional court also held that the “natural consequence” of the law’s incompatibility with the constitution meant that the Pulis’ could no longer be assured of obligatory, or automatic, renewal of the lease. The court qualified this by adding that this “does not mean the Pulis’ cannot rely [in maintaining the lease] on other rights in law.”
With this judgement in the bag, the owners requested eviction at the Agricultural Leases Control Board. The magistrate Simone Grech then said in her judgement that given the constitutional court judgment, she had no choice but to order eviction.
It’s that eviction judgement that has now been appealed.
Legal sources consulted by Lovin Malta concurred that the eviction sets a flawed precedent, especially since the law does have a legitimate aim in the public interest, as conceded by the courts to some extent. Moreover, the constitutional court’s take on renewal of lease not being “obligatory” was made within the context of lack of proportionality between the amount of ground rent and price of land.
Europe’s most supreme court, the European Court of Human Rights, allows States under its jurisdiction, including Malta, wide discretion on setting restrictions of property rights in the public interest. It only rules against the State if the law is “manifestly without reasonable foundation.”
In Malta’s case, there are compelling reasons to restrict property rights to protect agricultural land. Farming is under intensifying pressure from encroachments of development, global warming and droughts, and the dwindling number of people willing to go into farming – all of this is leading to ever-greater reliance on food imports, which is an issue of national security.
As such, eviction is not the answer, or at least not the only answer, since the issue is the proportionality between ground rent and the price of land that has yet to be resolved.
Image credit: Ian Falzon
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