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| The End of a Never-Ending Story? |
| (2013-04-10) |
| Last updated: 2013-04-11 13:53 EET |
In Romania, the process of giving back the property confiscated by the former communist regime has been the most inefficient and expensive in the whole of Eastern Europe. Moreover, Romania is the only former communist country where this process is still far from being over. The current government, however, seems determined to take the bull by the horns and tackle the problem.
The property nationalised by the communists has been the subject of much controversy and delay ever since the beginning of the 1990s. Despite the many laws on the subject, there has never been a coherent and long-term government strategy in the field, the price of which has been paid by ordinary citizens. Many of them fought for their rights before the European Court of Human Rights, which gave Romania until the beginning of April to come up with coherent legislation in this area.
Otherwise, the Court threatens to pass similar rulings in all cases stemming from this issue and order huge compensations to be paid by the Romanian state. Under the circumstances, the government in Bucharest is to approve a draft law this week on compensations for nationalised buildings, a law agreed on with the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe. Next week, the government plans to call for a confidence vote in Parliament on this draft law.
Prime minister Victor Ponta: “The draft law will be discussed by the government and then submitted to parliament ahead of a confidence vote. The permanent bureaus will establish a calendar and it’s very likely that next week I will be able to appear before parliament to call for a vote of confidence.”
The main provisions of the draft law refer to restitution in kind where possible or compensation in money, as well as an 85% tax on litigious rights. Also, buildings that will be given back to their original owners and which are currently used as schools, hospitals and cultural centres will have to maintain their current activities for another 20 years.
“The restitution is a problem of Romania, not of the Social Liberal Union”, said prime minister Victor Ponta, amid criticism from the centre-right opposition. The latter called on the prime minister not to have the draft law pushed through parliament based on a confidence vote, without a public debate. With the government holding a 70% majority in parliament, passing the law would be a formality, says the opposition, as well as a way of hiding from the media and the public the secret deals made by the Social Liberal Union with their friends on the real estate market, including influential business people and even politicians who took advantage of the restitution process and got rich as a result of some dubious transactions.
The representatives of the Catholic Church also disagree with the government’s calling for a vote of confidence in parliament on the restitution law. Cardinal Lucian Muresan called for a postponement of this procedure because the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches have not been consulted when this law was drafted. As for the owners’ associations, they say that with this law, the government does not intend to do justice to the owners, but force them to sell their rights to the real estate sharks, who will once again benefit from the property restitution process.
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