E/C.12/55/D/2/2014
whether or not the State party’s internal rules governing mortgage enforcement
procedures and the possible auctioning of mortgaged properties, which may be
dwellings, are generally consistent with the right to housing. So in the present case the
Committee will confine itself to considering whether the inadequate notice given to
the author — as already established — did or did not significantly affect her right to a
defence, such as to entail a violation of the right to housing.
13.6 According to the Civil Procedure Act in force at the material time, the debtor in a
mortgage enforcement procedure can oppose the auction only on very limited grounds,
such as that the mortgage guarantee or the obligation has been extinguished. They
cannot, in this procedure, challenge unfair terms, for example. On the other hand, the
ordinary process allows the debtor to freely mount wide -ranging challenges to the
loan. It could then be argued that failure to appear in the enforcement procedure might
not be particularly serious, since the debtor would in any case have access to the
regular procedure to defend her rights. But for that argument to stand it would be
necessary for the ordinary procedure to permit suspension of the enforcement process
and of the auction of the property, since otherwise, a defence through the regular
procedure would not suffice to guarantee the right to housing, because the person
would not be able to stop the sale of their home and would only be able to obtain
compensation or restitution of the property at a later stage, a ssuming that were even
possible. The Committee notes that the inadequate notice to the author occurred on 30
October 2012, when the Court publicly posted notification. The judgement of the
Court of Justice of the European Union referred to by the State par ty must be No. C415/11, Mohamed Aziz v. Catalunyacaixa, which is dated 14 March 2013, several
months after that inadequate notice, and, as stated in that judgement, it is clear that,
until that moment, ordinary proceedings would not have been able to susp end the
enforcement procedure. The author was thus deprived of the possibility of defending
herself during the enforcement process and of stopping the auction, and when the
inadequate notice materialized, even the regular procedure could not be deemed a
potentially adequate alternative because it gave no possibility of suspending the
enforcement process.
13.7 The Committee therefore considers that the inadequate notice constituted at that
moment a violation of the right to housing, one that was not subseque ntly remedied by
the State party as the author was denied both reconsideration of the decision to order
an auction and amparo as sought in the Constitutional Court.
C.
Conclusion and recommendations
14. Taking into consideration all the information provided, the Committee considers
that the facts before it reveal that the Court did not take all reasonable measures to
adequately notify the author of the lending institution’s application for mortgage
enforcement (see para. 13.3 above), in order to ensure that the author was informed of
the start of the procedure; and, as a consequence, the Court prevented the author from
mounting a proper defence, in court, of her right to housing.
15. The Committee, acting pursuant to article 9, paragraph 1, of the Op tional
Protocol to the Covenant, is of the view that, by failing to fulfil its obligation to
provide the author with an effective remedy, the State party violated her rights under
article 11, paragraph 1, of the Covenant, read in conjunction with article 2 , paragraph
1. In the light of the Views in the present communication, the Committee makes the
following recommendations to the State party.
Recommendations in respect of the author
16. The State party has an obligation to provide the author with an effective remedy,
in particular: (a) to ensure that the auction of the author ’s property does not proceed
GE.15-17368
15/16