Malta’s Unjust Rent Laws
The Government of the Republic of Malta, a member state of the European Union, is unfairly targeting a small group of citizens by forcing them to rent out their properties at below market rates. Below is the opinion of the European Court in the Case of Buttigieg and Others v. Malta; Application No 22456/15 (http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-188275): “ The Court has previously held that in a situation where the applicants’ predecessor in title had, decades before, knowingly entered into a rent agreement with relevant restrictions (specifically the inability to increase rent or to terminate the lease), the applicants’ predecessor in title could not, at the time, reasonably have had a clear idea of the extent of inflation in property prices in the decades to follow.“ It also affirms that: “Furthermore, those applicants, who had inherited a property that had already been subject to a lease, had not had the possibility to set the rent themselves (or to freely terminate the agre...