The profit that will be made with certainty on an expropriated property has not been shared by the expropriating party with its former owner, repeated the Court of Cassation.
The deprivation of capital gains imposed on the former expropriated owner is not directly related to the damage created by the dispossession, according to the Court, and it was not taken into account in the compensation for expropriation.
An owner challenged the compensation that had been granted to him in the expropriation of land because he considered that it was unrelated to the value of his property. The expropriating authority will realize with certainty a very significant added value by reselling these assets, he observed, and it would be fair to take this into account in the compensation for the expropriation.
The compensation must only be related to the actual use of the property
But for the judges, it would be a matter of taking into account the added value created by future town planning operations, which is not permitted by law. The compensation must only be related to the effective use of the property, one year before the opening of the operations, even if the use that will be made of it after the expropriation was prohibited until then. It should not take into account the future. There is no disproportionate interference with the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions provided for by the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court concluded.
save on fees and earn up to €400 thanks our comparison of life insurance
The Constitutional Council ruled last June that this process, sometimes called expropriations for resale, was not unconstitutional either because it aimed to protect public funds by limiting the cost of expropriations.
(Cass. Civil 3, 2.3.2022, M 20-17.133).
Reproduction forbidden.