European Property Rights and Wrongs - Diana Wallis MEP

The lobbying continues to find a political or legal route to challenge some of
the state actions that are behind these cases. It remains to be seen how the crash
in the world economy and loss of building development as a driver of economy
will affect the outcomes. Perhaps as the building development lobby lose their
powerful voice to influence thinking in policy, the environmental lobby will move
to address the overdevelopment and environmental abuses that have occurred
and move policy towards sustainable development.
Ms Jacqui Cotterill from the village of Parcent outlines how the EU institutions
assisted in her case:
Parcent is a village with a population of just over 1000 in the province of Alicante,
in the Valencian region of Spain. In January 2006 the local council voted to approve
the construction of 3 building plans for urbanisations known as PAIs, with
over 1800 new houses and a proposed increase in the population to 5,000. The
urbanisations were to be built on the hillsides of the countryside surrounding
Parcent, a devastating impact on the local environment.
The council meeting was held on the last day before the Valencian land law LRAU
was due to be replaced by a new, reputedly more citizen-friendly law. Residents
were concerned that the Local Council were attempting to rush the plans through
before the new replacement law went into force.
During the council meeting 200 residents demonstrated in the rain outside the
Town Hall and the next day formed the Association ‘Veins de Parcent’, neighbours
of Parcent, with the plan to campaign to overturn the plans. Veins de Parcent became
a very active campaign group, organising demonstrations, writing petitions to
regional and national Ombudsman, launching a legal case which succeeded in temporarily
halting the largest plan which became known as the Parcent Doctrine and
launching a petition to the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee.
The idea for the petition to the European Parliament arose after ‘Veins de Parcent’
attended a meeting in Madrid on urban planning abuses organised by the Green
group of the European Parliament, with the then MEP David Hammerstein Mintz
and the group’s petitions advisor in attendance. During the seminar the process of
submitting a petition was explained along with advice on what kind of violations
of European Directives could apply in various situations. The advice and support
of the Green group was invaluable.
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