On 15 October 2026 the European Court of Human Rights delivered an inadmissibility decision in Elit-Fitness S.R.L. v. the Republic of Moldova, application 21829/13. That is what the Government Agent in Chișinău says. It is not a judgment on the merits. It is not an award of damages. It is not a finding against Moldova and not a finding that the Chișinău gym was stolen.

The company sought protection of possessions: a 211.1 m² hall, leased on 15 September 2003 for ten years, then eviction and annulment of the contract. The State University of Physical Education and Sport was recognised as owner by a final ruling of 7 May 2009. According to the company, on 5 August 2009 the locks were changed and the equipment was taken to a university store. That is the applicant’s account as retained in the summary, not a criminal verdict.

The Court recalled that Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 requires a “possession” or a proprietary interest sufficiently established in domestic law. The Moldovan courts, including the Supreme Court of Justice, treated the lease as if it had never existed. The ECHR did not find that interpretation arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable.

The landlord’s title — company C. in the decision — was restored in 2020, after the events in this file. The Court says that did not create, at the date of the eviction, a sufficient legal basis for the claimed right to use the hall. On clientele: the file did not show that customers depended on the 2003 contract or the exact address, nor that the firm could not have continued elsewhere. That is not a general rule that goodwill is never a possession; it is what was shown here.

The possessions complaint was declared incompatible ratione materiae, Article 35 § 3 (a). The effective-remedy complaint, Article 13, no longer applied once there was no arguable claim of a Convention right. The application is inadmissible under Article 35 §§ 1 and 4. The decision is in French, on the Court’s site, the Agent writes.

The closed fact is inadmissibility. It is not a verdict that Elit-Fitness lied and not a verdict that USEFS breached the Convention. Leases in general do not fall with this case.

Image: European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, 8 November 2019, Gzen92, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The Court’s building, not the Chișinău gym.

Sources consulted: CEDO declară inadmisibilă cererea clubului Elit-Fitness privind sala închiriată la Chișinău — informat.ro; Elit-Fitness S.R.L. v. the Republic of Moldova — Government Agent.