A €12 farm rent breaches A1P1, but the tenant keeps the field

The Constitutional Court, composed of Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti, Mr Justice Anthony Ellul and Mr Justice Robert G. Mangion, decided on 23 July 2026 an appeal by three owners of a field at Ħal Luqa from a First Hall judgment of 30 May 2024 that had dismissed their claims against the State Advocate and their agricultural tenant.

The court holds that the Agricultural Leases (Reletting) Act (Chapter 199), as it stood before Act XXII of 2022, breached the owners' rights under article 37 of the Constitution, Article 1 of the First Protocol and article 6 of the Convention, and orders the State Advocate to pay €7,319.50 with interest and the costs of both instances.

It leaves in place the dismissal of the claims to declare the tenant unable to rely on articles 3, 4 and 14 and to evict him.

The facts

The owners received the field, of about 2,660 square metres, by donation from their parents on 7 February 2013. It had been let under an agricultural lease for decades at a qbiela of €12 payable every two years; the tenant has worked it since 1986. The owners never asked the Rural Leases Control Board for an increase.

In June 2022 they filed a constitutional application claiming that articles 3, 4 and 14 of Chapter 199 gave the tenant an indefinite right of relocation, denied them a fair rent and an effective remedy, and discriminated against agricultural owners; they asked for damages, a declaration that the tenant could no longer rely on those articles, and eviction. The court-appointed architect valued the potential rent at €2,700 a year in 2022 and at €16,805 for the period since the donation.

What the court held

The court first fixes the temporal frame: Chapter 199 was amended by Act XXII of 2022, so every declaration concerns the law before that Act. It then rejects the State Advocate's plea under article 37(2)(f) of the Constitution: that exception covers the taking of property incidental to a lease, while the owners complain of control of use and of the quantum of rent, to which article 37 applies (Constitutional Court, 31 May 2023).

On the first ground of appeal the court compares the rent received with the potential yield and finds that «ma nżammx bilanċ bejn id-drittijiet tas-sid u l-interessi tal-bidwi» [no balance was kept between the owner's rights and the farmer's interests], following Constitutional Court judgments of 23 November 2020 and 12 July 2023.

The restrictions serve a legitimate social aim, but the law as it stood and as it was applied did not guarantee the owner a rent not too far below what the free market would give for agricultural use.

The ground succeeds only within those limits: the court does not accept that articles 3, 4 and 14 gave the tenant a perpetual right that made repossession impossible, because article 4 listed the cases in which the owner could take the land back, and uncertainty about when that will happen is not what decides a breach.

On the second ground the court holds that effective access to court is integral to a fair hearing. The owners had access to the Board but «fil-kuntest ta' suq regolat il-konklużjoni raġġunta kienet ser tkun waħda prevedibbli u fil-probabbiltà mhux a favur is-sid» [in the context of a regulated market the conclusion reached would have been predictable and probably not in the owner's favour].

Article 3(2)(c) tied any increase to comparable fields in the same part of the island, which were themselves under old controlled leases, so the remedy the Board could give was likely insignificant. Adopting its reasoning in Baldacchino Holdings Limited v. Attorney General (Constitutional Court, 12 July 2023) and J&C Properties, the court finds a breach of article 6 and article 39.

On remedy the court declines to remit the case. Compensation runs from the donation on 7 February 2013 to the filing on 20 June 2022. From the architect's €16,805 it deducts 30% for the public interest and 50% because there was no guarantee that the land would have been let at that figure throughout, and subtracts the €62.50 actually received, giving €5,819.50.

Moral damages are set at €1,500. The total of €7,319.50 carries 8% interest from the date of the First Hall judgment. The dismissal of the first claim, part of the fourth, and the sixth and seventh claims stands, so the tenant remains in possession.

Why it matters

An owner of a field under an old qbiela can now expect a declaration of breach and damages measured on the architect's potential rent, cut by 30% for the public interest and by half for uncertainty, for the period up to the 2022 amendment; the earlier failure to apply to the Board is not fatal.

But the Constitutional Court will not, on this line of cases, strip the tenant of the statutory protection or order eviction, which distinguishes agricultural leases from the commercial cases under Chapter 69.

Where it sits

The case applies the three rules of Article 1 of the First Protocol and the fair-balance test to control of use, the reading of article 37 of the Constitution as protecting the ius possidendi and not only against total divestment (Constitutional Court, 23 November 2020), and the access-to-court limb of article 6 where the remedy a tribunal can give is illusory.

Its authorities are the Constitutional Court judgments cited above and Baldacchino Holdings, with a Strasbourg judgment against Malta and a Constitutional Court judgment of 26 May 2026 on quantum.

Source

Constitutional Court, 321/2022/1, 23 July 2026: 321/2022/1