The District Court in Banja Luka has issued a ruling upholding the lawsuit of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka due to the so-called “silence of the administration”, and ordered the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology of the Republic of Srpska to issue a decision on the request of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka, submitted on 27 November 2024.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka has filed a request for the extraordinary annulment of the decision of the Department for Spatial Planning of the Banja Luka City Administration, regarding the issuance of a building permit for the construction of the so-called “Cyrillic Park”, due to procedural and substantive deficiencies that are so serious that they could not be corrected by ordinary and regular legal means.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assemby Banja Luka acted as a proxy for the tenants of the Association of Condominium Owners “Srpska 107a” – Committee for the Protection of the Park “Kupusište”, who opposed the construction of the park to the extent and in the manner of the City Administration and in the immediate vicinity of their residential buildings, and who were not allowed to participate in the construction permit granting procedure as an interested party. In this way, the tenants’ right to participate in decision-making on environmental issues was violated, a right guaranteed to them by the Aarhus Convention, to which Bosnia and Herzegovina is a signatory.
Since the Ministry did not decide on the request within the legally prescribed deadline, even after the urgency, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka filed a lawsuit with the District Court in Banja Luka for the so-called “silence of the administration”.
The court concludes in the reasoning of the verdict that in the case at hand the defendant did not decide on the prosecutor’s request of 27 November 2024 in the form of a decision – an administrative act, and clearly emphasizes that the defendant’s written response to the prosecutor’s request cannot constitute a formal administrative act. It was also noted that after the expiry of the 60-day deadline, the prosecutor sent an urgency request asking that a decision be made on the request within an additional deadline, however, the competent authority did not comply with the legal obligation again.
Taking into account all of the above, the court accepted the lawsuit and issued a judgment ordering the Ministry to issue an administrative act on the request in question without delay, and no later than 30 days from the receipt of the judgment.
Photo: Media/Gerila
