Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Law

The importance of intergenerational transfer of family farms and a specific hungarian solution

Judit Barta — 2024-12-19

After a short introduction to the EU, the present study aims to present the importance and generational situation of agricultural family-owned businesses in Hungary in the light of statistical data on the one hand, and the legal rules specifically applicable to them on the other, focusing on the definition of the concept and the specific Hungarian solution to facilitate intergenerational farm transfers.

The peculiarities of restitution of agricultural land in Ukraine

Sibilla Buletsa — 2024-12-19

In the post-Soviet space, two main approaches formed the basis of land reforms: 1) restitution, i.e., the return of land ownership to former owners (as in the Baltic countries, Romania, Slovakia, Albania, etc.), and 2) privatisation of land plots (as in Ukraine, Belarus, etc.). Ukraine lacks legislation regarding property restitution, as the country has not yet decided on this matter. Worldwide, property restitution is carried out to restore property rights violated by communist and national-socialist (Nazi) totalitarian systems. The state must acknowledge its unlawful seizure of private property by recognising the act of violence by the state during the acquisition of property rights. The adoption of the Land Code on March 13, 1992, marked the beginning of land privatisation in Ukraine. The initial years of land reform and privatisation primarily focused on agriculture. In the sphere of agrarian production, a reform was necessary to provide land to workers. For this reason, starting from 1992 rural lands in Ukraine, which were previously owned by the state and used by agricultural enterprises, were transferred to peasants. During the war in Ukraine beginning in 2022, existing legislation prohibits both the formation of land plots through free privatisation, as well as specifying their boundaries and registering them in the state land cadastre.

The Restitution of Agricultural Land During the Political Regime Change and its Effects on Hungarian Property Relations Today

Csilla Csák — 2024-12-19

In Hungary after World War II, the system of large estates was abolished and private peasant ownership was established. The peasant strata’s desire for land was therefore satisfied within the framework of a micro- and smallholder structure. During the period of collectivisation, the possibility of using peasant land practically disappeared, and the collective use of peasant private property took place within the framework of the producer cooperative system. From the 1960s until the period of the regime change, the cooperative model became dominant in terms of agricultural production. The political regime change of 1989/90 and the associated economic transformation also meant that the system of large-scale cooperative land use was dismantled and lands under cooperative ownership and partly state ownership were privatised. Part of this process was the provision of compensation, which primarily meant state reparation for unjust property deprivations (including land ownership) in the period between 1939 and 1967. This also had negative aspects in terms of the concept of reparations, which did not strengthen the market economy character of agricultural activity and agricultural holdings.

Social Ownership and Restitution of Agricultural Land in Croatia

Hano Ernst — 2024-12-19

This paper discusses the state of agricultural land in Croatia from a historical perspective. It first discusses the genesis and development of collectivisation of agricultural land in Croatia after the Second World War, particularly with reference to the idiosyncrasies of Yugoslav socialist property as compared to traditional Soviet doctrines. The developments are characterised by gradual changes in legal status as reflections of changing ideologies and policies during the socialist period concerning self-management, as well as sectoral developments (cooperative and industrial sectors). The paper goes on to analyse the transformation of social ownership over agricultural land, both in terms of its direct transformation into state ownership, as well as its in-kind restitution to former rights-holders or their descendants, particularly referencing the causes and consequences of various problems in achieving initial privatisation goals. The paper finally draws conclusions on the current state of agricultural land policies and its prospects.

Legal issues in the property, use, preservation, and management of agricultural lands in Bulgaria

Minko Georgiev — 2024-12-19

This article reviews the subject of ‘agricultural lands’ in Bulgaria from a legal aspect, for the period 1878-2023. It analyses the normative acts, legal consequences and the most important legal changes that the land reforms in the country derive from. There is a review of the processes of restitution, land-settlement, and limitations of property; the initiation of cadastral maps and other events and initiatives related to them; legal actions of the administrative and judicial organs; and decisions related to the judicial and constitutional control, related to the owners and users of agricultural lands. There is some detailing of how the latter perform their legal rights to the land in certain cases. The study is provisionally divided into three sub-periods: the first presents legislation in Bulgaria related to agricultural lands in the period after the establishment of the Third Bulgarian State. It gives explanation to some important moments, deriving from the historical participation of the country in the political events related to the Balkan Peninsula and the First World War, as well as to the policies of land-settlement, organisation and cooperation of the agricultural subjects; establishment of the first administrative bodies; and the administration of the processes related to the property and in particular to the agricultural land. The second period reflects on the legislation defined by the collectivisation and expropriation of the private property, the limitation of the economic relations in regard to the agricultural lands, and the following redefining of the legal institutes related to the property of agricultural land. In a sense the first two parts of the article give answers to the reasons and the need for the last land reform performed after 1989. A milestone in the article is the process of restitution as well as the problems of the legal doctrine of the last period from 1989 until 2023. Apart from identifying the most important problems of the management of the legal aspect of the restitution processes, the article provides a short review of the new course and the ‘curve’ of the legislation regarding agricultural land. The newest changes in the trajectory of the public relations and the legal challenges deriving from the legal order in the European Union are presented, including: legal contradictions of the Bulgarian legislation with the law of the EU; reflection of the structural funds over the legal processes related to the agricultural lands; and the ‘green’ payments and consolidation of the property in agricultural lands. At the end there are some suggestions for the improvement of the legal framework regarding the agricultural lands in the country. The article uses several legal methods, including legal-historical, positive legal analysis, and a normative approach in explaining the offers suitable for the change of the legal framework regarding agricultural lands.

Land Restitution in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after 1990

Ondřej Horák — 2024-12-19

This article is divided into two parts: the first is devoted to the historical context of restitution; the second to its legal regulation and implementation. In the first part, state interventions in property and post-war land reforms are presented with an emphasis on the so-called second land reform (after 1945), which consisted of three different and relatively independent phases. The first phase (1945) was associated with the confiscation of agricultural property and its redistribution (Presidential Decree No. 12/1945 Coll., regulation of the Presidium of the Slovak National Council No. 4/1945 Coll. SNC). The second phase (1947) aimed at revising the first land reform (Special Act No. 142/1947 Coll.). The third phase (after February 1948) was presented as the new land reform (Special Act No. 46/1948 Coll.), and resulted in collectivisation associated with the establishment of agricultural cooperatives (at the time, four types of cooperatives were distinguished according to the degree of collectivisation, or according to the method of joint production and remuneration: in the first type, there was a joint organisation of sowing, harvesting and the use of mechanisation; the second type introduced remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work performed for the cooperative, regardless of the size of the cooperative share). Within the framework of collectivisation (1948–1960), we may distinguish three phases. In the first phase (up to 1953), the number of unified agricultural cooperatives (including preparatory committees) increased to approximately 8600, which was more than half of the municipalities in the Czech lands (at first, unified agricultural cooperatives of the first type predominated; at the end of 1951 and the beginning of 1952, the number of the third and fourth types of unified agricultural cooperatives increased); during the second phase (1955–1960), the number of unified agricultural cooperatives increased to approximately 12,500, mainly of the third and fourth types; in the third phase (the 1970s), cooperatives merged into larger economic units (in 1980, there were 1722 of them). The process of collectivisation was accompanied by various forms of coercion, which finally resulted in the persecution of the peasantry – in addition to kangaroo courts against the opponents of collectivisation, ‘Action K’ (Kulak) took place from November 1951 to May 1952 and from November 1952 to July 1953 (based on the so-called ‘directive of the three ministers’ of October 1951) to resettle the families of convicted peasants. After both world wars, approximately one third of all the agricultural land in Czechoslovakia was subject to land reform; 4,143,149 hectares of all land was redistributed under the three phases of land reform after 1945, including 2,135,798 hectares of agricultural land. Small beneficiaries obtained 30.9% of the total, or 59.8% of agricultural land; 52.1% of all (especially forest land) belonged to the state. According to the statistics for 1978, the state sector managed 30.6% and the cooperative sector 62.1% of agricultural land in Czechoslovakia; in 1989, the socialist sector created a 98.7% share in all the agricultural land, out of which the cooperative sector, including crofts, created 67.8%, the state sector created 30.9%, while independently farming peasants and small landholders created only 1.3%. In the context of the development after the collapse of the communist regime, restitution means the process and the resulting state of redressing some property wrongs that occurred before 1990. It may be understood in a narrower sense (carried out on the basis of restitution legislation after 1990) or in a broader sense, where it includes not only the national but also the international level (including case law). They represented an important tool for coming to terms with the past, but also for the transformation of the economy and society after the collapse of the communist regime. Gradually, between 1990 and 2012 nine main restitution regulations were adopted in the territory, most of which were repeatedly amended. The Czech Constitutional Court also repeatedly intervened in the restitution legislation (in 1994 and 1995, by cancelling the condition of permanent residence for determining restitution entitlement; and in 2005 and 2018, by cancelling the so-called ‘restitution full stop’ – referring to the possible end of the process of dealing with restitution cases). From the perspective of the definition of property wrongs, a general range of facts was mostly chosen (a more specific definition occurred in the case of municipal property, church property defined in the 1990 by enumeration, as well as Jewish property defined in the enumeration at least in part). From the perspective of entity, three laws related only to natural persons, four only to legal entities, and two to both natural persons and legal entities. From the perspective of the subject matter, two laws related to agricultural property, one to non-agricultural property, and six to both agricultural and non-agricultural property. From the perspective of the relevant period, most of the laws had not dealt with reparation of wrongs until 25 February 1948 (although this limit was explicitly mentioned in only three of them); in the case of three acts, it was bound to a later date, while only in the case of two acts did it also apply to wrongs committed before the mentioned date. Finally, from the perspective of the method of restoration of the ownership right, this occurred in two cases directly by law, in five cases by entry into the Land Registry, and in three cases by a decision of an administrative body (the 2012 Church Restitution Act regulated different methods for agricultural and non-agricultural property). For the area of restitutions, Act No. 229/1991 Sb. regulating the ownership relations to land and other agricultural property, (also called the ‘Land Act’), followed by Act No. 243/1992 Coll. (also called the ‘Transformation Act’), was the most important one from the perspective of agricultural and forest property (movable and immovable ones). While the first of them set the decisive period from 25 February 1948, the second also applied to property seized on the basis of confiscation decrees from 1945. The Land Act regulates both the rights and obligations of owners, original owners, users and lessees of land, as well as the competence of the state in regulating ownership and the rights to use the land. To date, it has been amended by 27 acts and 30 implementing regulations have been issued in relation to it. It defined in particular the beneficiaries (Section 4), Obligated entities (Section 5), property subject to restitution (Section 6 et seq. – originally it was 18 and, after the amendment, it was 20 cases), the deadlines for filing the claim (Section 13) and compensations for unreleased or damaged property (in Sections 14 to 16 and Section 20). In 2005, and again in 2018, the Constitutional Court also cancelled the so-called ‘restitution full stop’, by which the state tried to exclude the satisfaction of the restitution claims of beneficiaries in the form of providing replacement land, and leaving only financial compensation. In the case of determining the amount of financial compensation for unreleased land, the Constitutional Court has repeatedly taken the view that the State Land Office is obliged to provide beneficiaries with adequate compensation for confiscated property; however, it fails to do so. The issue of judicial settlement of restitution claims is still alive.

Disability policy reforms in the light of sustainability of the social security system in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary

Nóra Jakab — 2024-12-19

With populations ageing across the EU social security systems are becoming financially unsustainable, as a shrinking labour force may no longer be able to provide for a growing number of older people. The paper focuses on the results of the book „Sustainability of the Social Security System – Demographic Challenges and Answers in Central Europe”, which project was inspired by very important economic and social issues. One of the conclusions was, most good practices have been related to the employment and rehabilitation of people with disabilities. This paper therefore summarizes the key fundings of disability policy reforms in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. Reforms of disability benefits have been linked to active labour market policies, but there have been no major breakthroughs in employment.

Constitutional and Legal Aspects of the Processes of (De)nationalisation and Privatisation of land and of state-owned enterprises – Macedonian examples of controversial politicisation and elitisation

Tanja Karakamisheva-Jovanovska — 2024-12-19

The process of transition from former socialist to democratic systems brought to surface numerous questions about the political, legal, economic, social and cultural transformation in the societies in which these systems existed. With the fall of the Berlin wall and the so-called Iron Curtain, the former socialist states faced numerous challenges in dealing with the unfair nationalisation of citizens’ private property, dilemmas on how to apply a denationalisation process that will be fair and just, and which model of privatisation of state-owned capital to apply, having in mind the experience of the more advanced western democracies. The key issues in this context were: which type of market economy to choose, how fast should the transition be implemented and through which methods; the answers to these questions differed from country to country, because the transition, just as in a game of chess, does not have a winning formula, but offers merely a limited set of general rules of behaviour. The quest for an intellectually perfect concept of transition that would cover all possible scenarios and details would mean indefinite delay in its application. However, the lack of a coherent and clear strategy also generates serious social and economic problems. This is what the transfer from a planned and politically monolithic economy to a pluralistic and market-oriented economy has done in the countries of Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe, leaving behind a number of open issues and dilemmas. On the other hand, certain governments which captured the state institutions and did not set any boundaries between the party (personal) interests and the state interests, caused additional political turbulence. Partisan domination in the public/state administration had a strong effect on the ongoing privatisation processes, because business and the party in power were always on the same side of the coin. The high degree of political control over state resources created fertile ground for the emergence of political elites which entirely usurped the national economic potential of the given countries. Unlike the Central and East European countries, which successfully completed their denationalisation processes, the number of incomplete denationalisation cases in Macedonia is devastating. This paper will focus on the Macedonian transition under the influence of the transition processes in the region and will reveal a number of specific features of the Macedonian model. It will show the connection between the captured state and the privatisation of state capital. This connection results in a strong influx of private capital in the hands of the political elite through dubious processes of state capital privatisation, thus generating sources of corruption, clientelism, elitism, technocraticism and other similar processes that reflect the political power in a captured state.

Restitution of agricultural and forest land in the Republic of Serbia

Sloboda Midorović — 2024-12-19

This paper examines the solutions provided by the Serbian legislator for the restitution process, with a specific focus on agricultural and forest land. It traces the origins of this process to state interventionist measures such as agrarian reform and confiscation, which led to the creation of an agrarian fund used for land redistribution in line with socialist ideology. Although initial signs of the restitution process appeared in the early 1990s, no significant progress was achieved until the early 2000s. Rather than adopting a single, uniform law on restitution, the Serbian legislator chose to regulate the process through three separate laws: one addressing confessional restitution, another one dealing with general restitution, and a third one governing the return of property confiscated from Holocaust victims to Jewish communities. This paper outlines the key substantive and procedural provisions of these restitution laws and addresses certain contentious issues that have arisen during their practical implementation. The analysis is supported by the case law of the Restitution Agency and domestic courts. The conclusion emphasises that, despite its duration, the restitution process has yielded considerable results, particularly with respect to the restitution of agricultural land, where restitution in kind has been achieved in the vast number of cases.

Restitution of Nationalised or Collectivised Agricultural Lands and Forests – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lost in Transition

Meliha Povlakić — 2024-12-19

In the former Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter: SRBH) agricultural and forest land, as important natural resources of any economy, were the subject of double restrictions. One was a result of the social attachment of property, and is immanent not only to socialistic regimes. The other restriction was the result of socialist ideology, which meant that these important economic resources could only to a limited extent be privately owned — and that everything beyond prescribed limits was nationalised. There was also a vast range of other reasons for the nationalisation of these goods. The transformation process entailed the removal of restrictions on the extent of ownership of these properties, and this was done within the framework of the constitutional reforms in the former Yugoslavia (1989/90). Still in the SRBH, after these constitutional reforms it was clear that denationalisation and restitution should follow. In 1991 it was forbidden by law to dispose of nationalised property. The measures of denationalisation and restitution of nationalised property are the focus of this article. First, a short analysis is given of the history of nationalisation and confiscation of property in the former Yugoslavia after the World War II. Since the end of the 20th Century (1995), Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) has been an independent state which has performed crucial reforms within the process of transformation. But the denationalisation measures regarding agricultural and forest land are still pending. One of the reasons for that is the fact that BH is composed of three separate legal orders: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Srpska and Brčko District of BH. All three legal orders have been thoroughly analysed, since the legislative competencies for regulating denationalisation are merely given to these constituent parts of BH. Due to the political tensions and problems, it is unlikely that a framework law will be passed. The unclear ownership of agricultural and forest land (no criterion for the division of state ownership has yet been established) led to the OHR imposing a ban on the disposal of these assets in 2022. The consequence of the long absence of restitution and the coexistence of two restraining orders, which have different reasons and follow different goals, is a lack of legal certainty. The article concludes that in Bosnia and Herzegovina the final implementation of the transformation process in general, and restitution as a part of it, still faces many obstacles — lack of legal basis, facts established during the war, processes that are not centralised and coordinated due to the state structure, adoption of legal solutions that may jeopardise restitution in general, and restitution of agricultural land and forests as well. In brief: Bosnia and Herzegovina is still lost in transition.

Nationalisation of agricultural lands and forests in Poland after World War II

Michał Sopiński — 2024-12-19

The article discusses how the post-war nationalisation of agricultural lands and forests, and the associated other expropriation activities were a far-reaching consequence of the outbreak of World War II. The article explains the political and historical circumstances of the nationalisation of agricultural lands and forests in Poland after World War II. Special attention was paid to the legal regulation of nationalisation of agricultural land, as well as the nationalisation of forests and forest lands. The conclusion discusses the legality of land nationalisation from the aspect of the legal acts in force at the time. Based on that, we may conclude that the nationalisation of agricultural lands and forests in Poland after World War II, executed by the communists, did not respect the law, particularly in view of the constitutional issue of pre-war Poland.

Legal Complexities of Agricultural Land Restitution in Romania (1990-2024)

Emőd Veress — 2024-12-19

The legal and socio-political complexities of agricultural land restitution in Romania reveal a process shaped by conflicting objectives and administrative hurdles. Initiated after the fall of the Soviet-type dictatorship, restitution aimed to address the injustices of collectivization and nationalization under the former regime. Post-World War II agrarian reforms and especially forced collectivization (1949–1962) dismantled private property rights in favour of collective and state ownership. Restitution policies introduced post-1989, starting with Act No. 18/1991 and evolving through subsequent amendments, attempted to reverse these changes. However, the need to balance transitional justice with socio-political stability led to a protracted and inconsistent process. Key issues include legal hurdles in verifying ownership, practical difficulties in returning land, and the influence of political and economic factors on outcomes. Despite substantial progress in returning property to original owners or their heirs, inefficiency and legal ambiguity have left many claims unresolved, undermining public trust in the restoration of property rights.

The Denationalisation of Agricultural Land and Forests in Slovenia: Unfolding a DecadesLong Journey

Ana Vlahek — 2024-12-19

The article analyses the denationalisation of agricultural land and forests in post-communist Slovenia, in the aftermath of its departure from socialist Yugoslavia in 1991. It begins with a historical overview of the relevant nationalisation measures adopted during and after the Second World War on the territory of Slovenia. It then analyses the prerequisites for, and the procedural rules on, the restitution of agricultural land and forests as set out in the Act on Denationalisation of 1991, and its further amendments, primarily shaped by decisions of the Constitutional Court. Special legislation on the return of property to agrarian communities and their members, as well as cooperatives, is also analysed. The article also focuses on the legal and procedural nuances that have shaped the denationalisation process in Slovenia, which after more than 30 years is finally in its closing stage.