Facts
The case concerns a tenant, X., who has occupied an apartment in Geneva since January 1980. The owner, [Y.], acquired the apartment in 2002 and terminated X.'s lease in 2002 citing personal need. X. requested the Geneva Department of Economy, Employment, and Foreign Affairs to establish that [Y.] had acquired the apartment in violation of the Federal Act on the Acquisition of Real Estate by Foreigners (ANRA). The Department found that [Y.] had indeed violated the law, but that the action to restore the previous state was time-barred.
X. appealed to the Geneva Administrative Court, which declared the appeal inadmissible on the grounds that X. could no longer claim a current interest in appealing since [Y.] had withdrawn the lease termination. X. filed an appeal against this decision with the Federal Court.
Considerations
The Federal Court examined X.'s standing to appeal under Art. 20 para. 2 let. a ANRA, which requires the appellant to have a protected interest in the decision being annulled or modified. The case law has established that the protected interest consists in the practical utility that admitting the appeal would bring to the appellant, in avoiding them from suffering economic, ideal, material, or other harm that the challenged decision would cause them.
The Federal Court considered that X. could not claim a current interest in appealing, as Y.'s withdrawal of the termination had rendered the appeal moot. Furthermore, the interest invoked by X. was not in a sufficiently close, special, and worthy of consideration relationship with the subject of the dispute, as it aimed to obtain from the competent authority a decision refusing authorization in order to establish the nullity of the lease and to be able to conclude a new one with a supposedly more secure or more…