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European rights court orders Slovenia to pay man 85,000 euros who lost home over utility debt

LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Europe's top human rights court ordered Slovenia on Tuesday to pay 85,000 euros (72,184 pounds) to a man whose family home was forcibly sold by a local court to repay a debt he owed to a state utility. The European Court of Human Rights acted on a complaint filed by Zoran Vaskrsic in 2012 after his family was evicted from their home following its sale over the four-year-old debt, which originally amounted to 124 euros. The ECHR said the Slovenian court had breached the European human rights convention by interfering with the "peaceful enjoyment" of someone's property. It said the court had also failed to strike a "fair balance" between the general interest of the community and an individual's fundamental rights. Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic that joined the European Union in 2004, has been penalised several times by European institutions over judicial irregularities, mainly the excessive lengths of some court cases that lasted several years. The Slovenian Justice Ministry provided no immediate comment on the Vaskrsic case. (Reporting By Marja Novak)