Finnish house

The Supreme Court decision regarding real estate in Finland has purely propaganda value

The Civil Division of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned the decisions of lower instances and ordered the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg to consider the merits of the claim brought by the Tsvetkov family against the state of Finland.

Information about this decision appeared on the website of the RF Armed Forces on March 24. From the same message we learn that the Tsvetkovs bought a house with a plot in Finland for 180,000 euros in 2017 and used it for their own pleasure until July 2023, when they were turned back when crossing the Finnish border. The reason for this was the tightening of visa requirements.

In a lawsuit against the Finnish government, filed with the Dzerzhinsky District Court, the Tsvetkovs indicated that for the same reason they were deprived of the opportunity to conduct a civil dispute in the courts of Finland, and demanded that the local state buy out their property and compensate for moral damages.

The Dzerzhinsky District, St. Petersburg Regional and Third Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction refused to accept the claim, citing, as the Supreme Court points out, “jurisdictional immunity of a foreign state.”

In my opinion, the problem is also in the rules of jurisdiction.

Both in the Russian Civil Procedure Code (GPC), and almost everywhere, including Finland, claims related to real estate are considered at the place of its location. By declaring that it is impossible to conduct a dispute in Finland, the Tsvetkovs are disingenuous - this is possible through a representative, although the money spent on him is unlikely to be recouped. The spouses are also not deprived of the right to sell the disputed house themselves. And not a civil, but an administrative claim (complaint) can be brought against the state of Finland at its place of residence (represented by the highest state body) with a requirement not to create obstacles to entry into the country.

But even in St. Petersburg, the Tsvetkovs’ claim, after the Supreme Court’s instructions, must be accepted and considered one way or another.

It will be difficult to make and justify a decision in favor of the Tsvetkovs in Russia, but it will be completely impossible to implement. Unless sovereign Finland takes charge of this. But such a precedent will open a kind of Pandora’s box: the Tsvetkovs are far from the only St. Petersburg family that bought a “dacha” in Finland.

And not only in Finland - there is also real estate owned by Russians on the Cote d'Azur, in London, San Francisco, and you never know where.

In making this decision, the Civil Collegium of the RF Armed Forces, in my opinion, proceeded not so much from legal, but from propaganda considerations, trying to show how “unfriendly countries,” while boasting of their Human Rights Doctrine, at the same time violate the rights of Russians. This is indeed true, and applies not only to real estate. But the situation, which was caused by the SVO and the response measures of European countries, can be resolved not at the legal, but only at the political level.