European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 159

January 2013

Zolotas v. Greece (no. 2) - 66610/09

Judgment 29.1.2013 [Section I]

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1

Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1

Peaceful enjoyment of possessions

Accrual to State of monies on bank accounts that had become irrecoverable owing to operation of statutory limitation period: violation

 

Facts - Having opened a bank account in Greece, the applicant was obliged to leave the country for several years. On his return, his bank refused to pay back to him the balance in his account on the ground that it had remained dormant for over twenty years. In 2003 the applicant filed a claim with the civil courts in order to recover the sum in question (EUR 30,550). The courts took the view that his claims against the bank were barred by the limitation period stipulated in the Civil Code and that the sum in question belonged to the State, as beneficiary of dormant bank accounts. In January 2009 the Court of Cassation dismissed an appeal by the applicant on points of law.

Law - Article 1 of Protocol No. 1: When the applicant had visited his bank in February 2003 to enquire about his account, he had learnt that as no transactions had been registered on it since the second half of 1981 all his claims had become time-barred. It could be seen from the domestic courts’ decisions that on opening his account he had signed an agreement with the bank to open a deposit account. The applicant’s claims under that agreement were subject to the twenty-year limitation period provided for by the Civil Code. The domestic courts to which the applicant had taken his case had applied the law, under which cash deposits and interest accruing thereon in banks would be transferred irreversibly to the State where, for a period of twenty years, they had not been claimed by the account holder or there had been no transactions registered on the account. The court of appeal had further found that the limitation period had not been interrupted, as the registration in the bank’s records of interest that had accrued on the applicant’s account did not stop the period running, nor had it been suspended by force majeure, as the applicant had alleged.

The application of a limitation period to the applicant’s claims in respect of his own bank account had constituted an interference with his right to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. The time-bar had pursued a legitimate aim in the general interest: namely that of terminating, for reasons of economic efficiency, legal relationships that had been created so long before that their existence had become uncertain. That time bar was reasonable, as the period was a long one and it was not difficult or impossible for account holders to stop it running. However, the application of such a radical measure as the time-barring of claims to a bank account, on the ground that no transactions had been registered for a certain time, together with case-law to the effect that the crediting of interest by a bank was not regarded as an account transaction interrupting the limitation period, had the result of placing account holders, especially when they were ordinary citizens unversed in civil or banking law, in an unfavourable situation in relation to the bank, or even to the State. Under the Civil Code, while a person who deposited a sum of money in a bank transferred to it the right to use that sum, the bank was required to keep it, and if it used the sum to make profit for itself it had to return an equivalent sum to the depositor on the termination of the agreement. The account holder was therefore entitled to believe, in good faith, that his deposit with the bank was safe, especially when he had been receiving interest. It was legitimate for the account holder to expect that a situation threatening the substance of his agreement with the bank and his financial interests would be notified to him so that he could make provisions beforehand to act in accordance with the law and preserve his right to the protection of his property. Such a relationship of trust was inherent in banking and banking law. The State had a positive obligation to protect the citizen and to require that banks, in view of the unfortunate consequences of such a limitation period, should inform the holder of a dormant account of the pending expiry of the limitation period, thus enabling him to stop the period running, for example by carrying out a transaction on the account. The failure to require such information risked upsetting the fair balance between the requirements of the general interest of the community and the imperatives of securing fundamental rights to the individual. The absence of that information had placed an excessive and disproportionate burden on the applicant that could not be justified by the need to terminate legal relationships whose existence had become uncertain or to ensure the proper functioning of the banking system.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 15,000 in respect of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage.

 

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