Introduction

This introductory chapter sets out the central theme of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) jurisprudence on rent controls under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights (P1-1). It sketches the Court&s;s treatment of landlords’ entitlement to profit, particularly in light of the landmark Hutten-Czapska v Poland judgment and the subsequent line of cases across Europe. The chapter locates this jurisprudence within its historical and political backdrop, noting how the dismantling of socialist housing policies and the post-2004 convergence towards market liberalisation shaped the Court&s;s reasoning. In mapping these developments, it introduces the Court&s;s apparent adoption of an “income statement” view of profit, one that privileges rental yields over capital appreciation and anticipates the implications of this perspective for the balancing exercise between individual property rights and the public interest. Moreover, the discussion turns to the important question of the extent to which the ECtHR has narrowed states’ margin of appreciation in designing rental market policies, a question this book addresses through its analysis of controlled rents found to violate P1-1, the awards of just satisfaction and the solutions to systemic violations it has endorsed. In laying out these issues, the chapter prepares the ground for a deeper interrogation of the admissibility of rent controls in Europe, if at all, and under what conditions, as well as of the economic and legal assumptions underlying the ECtHR&s;s approach.