The History of the Reprivatisation of Real Property in Poland, 1944-2015

Benedykt Wojciechowski

Perhaps no European nation was beset by an uglier assortment of foes in the 20th century than Poland. Her people were disappeared, her capital

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levelled, and her maps redrawn with the kind of childlike ease which seems ever to attend the infliction of hardship on the helpless. When peace came, Poland bore the yoke of Soviet patrimony for a further four decades, an interpretation of socialism exerting a radical influence on the law governing the ownership of real property. At a point in history such as our own where notions of national exceptionalism enjoy fresh popularity1 and great powers are able still to annex the territory of sovereign nations to no apparent detriment,2 it seems especially appropriate to contemplate law’s role in configuring Eastern European society. This study is preoccupied with three things in particular, the first being the modes in real property, commercial, agricultural, and residential, was expropriated by the Polish state for ideological and other purposes between 1944 and 1989. The second object of this study is the range of legal remedies available to those from whom the state expropriated real estate, incorporating peripheral issues such as access to justice and developments concerning restitution for the loss of real estate situated in former Polish territories in the European Court of Human Rights. Lastly, this paper will explore statutory devices for the reprivatisation of real estate in the context of Hungary, adopting a comparative approach so as to identify possibilities for Polish reprivatisation policy. It will be argued throughout that legal recourse for those dispossessed by state nationalisation programmes is restrictive and inadequate, but necessarily so on account of the wide definition nationalisation has been given in the Polish context. It will be suggested that a novel statutory remedy be provided that recognises the qualitative distinction between real property seized on ideological grounds and that which was expropriated for reasons of strict infrastructural practicality, widening the pool of eligible applicants for restitution in circumstances where property seizure was a matter of state discretion rather than an absolute necessity owing to unpreventable damage, such as that incidental to war, for which the state ought not to be held liable.

1 As we look forward to a plebiscite on our membership of the European Union.2 See Crimea.

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In order to properly apprehend the nature of existing legal measures for the restitution of nationalised property in Poland, it will be useful to provide a sketch of the demographic, political, and ideological developments that are particular to the country. Recast in 1918 following 123 years of Prussian, Austrian, and Russian partition, The Second Polish Republic in its infancy fought and repulsed (1919-1921) a Soviet force convinced that the “path to world conflagration” lay over Poland’s white corpse.3 Following this gigantic, unheard of victory,4 Poland consolidated its lands to the east by plebiscite and treaty, repossessing in this way the ethnically Polish Lwów and Wilno. This peaceful interlude was interrupted by the covertly-planned invasion, in 1939, of both Russia and Germany under the protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the effect of which was such that Poland had again, by the close of September 1939, “ceased to exist”.5 During the Second World War Poland lost 18.5% of its population.6 It became Europe’s killing ground, the site of Sobibor, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. It had its capital razed to the ground, Himmler’s order to leave not a stone standing very nearly fulfilled.7 Roughly 2 million of its people were deported to Arctic Russia, Siberia, or Kazakhstan by the Soviets, while approximately 3 million, predominantly Jewish citizens, were sent to extermination camps.8 Less commonly cited are the great movements of people which the Third Reich and the Soviet Union orchestrated: Norman Davies estimates that 24.85 million inhabitants of Poland were ‘relocated’ between 1936 and 1956.9 Overseas emigration saw an additional 1.5 million Poles settle elsewhere on account of the conflict and persecution that had come to characterise their homeland.10

3 General Tukhachevsky’s address to Red Army troops, July 2 1920. Quoted in J. Olczak-Ronikier, In the Garden of Memory (Krakow, 2002), 166.4 Lenin termed the campaign a ‘giant, unheard-of defeat’ for his side. Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin (Yale, 1999), 106.5 Norman Davies, Heart of Europe (Oxford, 1986), 66.6 Ibid, 64.7 It is estimated that upwards of 80% of Warsaw’s built heritage was damaged beyond repair in this way. John H. Stubbs, Emily G Makaš, Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas (Hoboken, 2011), 262.8 Norman Davies, op cit. 64.9 Ibid, 82.10 Kazimierz Piesowicz, “Demograficzne skutki II wojny swiatowej” in Studia Demograficzne No. 1/87 (1987), 136.

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After boundary changes enacted by Yalta and Potsdam, notably the award of the Wilno-Lwów belt to the Lithuania and the Soviet Union in adherence to the Curzon Line, Polish territory was reduced by roughly 20%.11 A richer pool of potential claimants for loss of property could hardly be imagined.

This tumultuous history in mind, we may now proceed to consider the legal means by which the state conducted its programmes of nationalisation between 1944 and 1989, and its motives for doing so. It is crucial, for our purposes, to discern nationalisation measures consistent with bringing into being an effective centrally planned economy from measures intended to repair war damage and the like. With regard to the first matter, a command economy would be futile were it not for the confiscation of large industrial enterprises, and indeed nationalisation has been described as the “basic law of any socialist revolution”.12 To this end, some 25 Nationalisation Acts were introduced between 1944 and 1989. The Law on the Nationalisation of Industry Act 1946, for example, provided that private enterprises employing more than 50 personnel and industrial operations such as mines and breweries of sufficient size would pass into state hands.13 Though it was decided that compensation would be paid to the former owners of such businesses, taking into account the depreciation of national assets and the value of the new nationalised enterprise, dispossessed owners were never actually compensated.14 With reference to agriculture, Poland did not experience radical collectivisation, and most agricultural property remained in the hands of individuals throughout the Soviet period, though it was often expropriated from its true owners – the notion of the kułak had currency in Poland too - and segmented for the benefit of smaller farms. The Agricultural Reform Decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation 1944 provided the legal means: according to its ordinances, land owned by natural or legal persons in excess of 100 hectares in total, or 50 hectares if the land was 11 These territories were exchanged for the east-German provinces of Pomerania and Silesia. See Fig. 1.12 Jan Wasilkowski, Zarys prawa rzeczowego (Warsaw, 1963), 92.13 Piotr Stect, “Reprivatisation of Nationalised Property in Poland” in Modern Studies in Property Law, Vol. 1: Property 2000, ed. Elizabeth Cooke (Oxford, 2001), 359.14 Ibid.

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already agricultural, passed by operation of law into the ownership of the State Treasury with no award of compensation.15 ‘Land’ here meant not only territory but buildings, animals, tools, and machinery; the State Treasury generally sold such property to smaller farmers for a nominal fee, and the original owners were ordered to relocate to a new county under regional variations of the Act.16 This Decree and its progeny gained the state 3.5 million hectares between 1944 and 1948, 1.2 million hectares of which was distributed among 387,000 peasant families; some 20,000 palaces passed into the possession of the state by the same Decree.17 Only 180 of these are in private hands at the time of writing.18 Some legislation served practical rather than ideological purposes, such as the so-called Warsaw Decree 1945 whose ostensible aim was the reconstruction of the decrepit capital. The Decree rendered all immovable property within the borders of Warsaw the property of the City and the State Treasury by operation of law, and the ownership of buildings which stood on such land would also pass to the City unless a dzierżawa wieczysta (perpetual lease or building right) was applied for and approved by a specific date.19 Two further legal devices are of great significance in the context of reprivatisation: The Renovation and Reconstruction Act 1959 and the rules governing acquisition by prescription. The Renovation Act allocated state funds for the refurbishment of privately owned buildings; after an initial assessment of the costs necessary to bring a property up to standard the owner of the building was given 14 days to declare that he would undertake the necessary work himself. If he did not do this, or failed to renovate his property, the state would bear the costs. If such costs amounted to more than 50% of the value of the building, the administration could assume ownership of both the property and the land

15 The Polish Committee for National Liberation’s Decree of September 6th, 1944, Art. 2 Par. 1, Letter E (Journal of Laws No 3 of 13).16 See The Decree on Regulation of Settlement in Western Provinces of Poland and in the Free City of Gdansk 1946. Piotr Stect, op cit, 361.17 Marek Kozubal, “Dwa pytania od ziemiam” in Rzeczpospolita, 22.05.2015.18 Ibid.19 The Warsaw Decree, Art. 7 Par. 1 (Journal of Laws No. 50, item 279).

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upon which it stood.20 Lastly, we must consider the matter of prescription: according to Polish law legal title to property is acquired by prescription under the doctrine of adverse possession after either 20 (where the possessor has acted in good faith) or 30 (where good faith cannot be evidenced) years of uninterrupted, autonomous possession have elapsed.21

The swiftness of change that characterised the early years of nationalisation in Poland, Hungary, and Romania would be echoed in the pace of the reprivatisation of enterprise and real property in the same nations following the break-up of the Soviet Union. While Thatcher is the figure most associated with privatisation in this country, Britain sold 5% of its business interests to private companies over a period of 10 years.22 Well over 50% of commercial activity was privatised in many Central and Eastern European countries over just 25 years.23 State-owned firms were privatised by the broad dispersal of shares throughout society, or bought out by foreign companies, or were broken up and their marketable assets auctioned off in the instance of loss-making enterprises. The state plays a huge part in reprivatisation, overseeing the handover of assets to the private sector and regulating the legal and administrative structure of the market in order to present foreign and domestic investors an environment of promise and certainty. This transfer required the moderation of public spending so as to optimise demand and curtail inflation. The new era of transparency was accompanied by the introduction of legislation intended to make amends for injustices committed under socialist regimes in Romania, Hungary, and elsewhere. Such legislation served to evidence states’ recalcitrance: private property was no longer to be wielded as an instrument of class war, land arbitrarily carved up and redistributed in the

20 Leszek Zatya, Reprivatisation of Real Estate in Poland: http://www.codozasady.pl/en/reprivatisation-of-real-estate-in-poland, accessed 10/05/2015.21 Arts 172-176 Polish Civil Code (Kodeks Cywilny).22 Kees Zijlstra, Privatisation in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, AP 220 EC/EW (97) 8.23 Ibid.

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interests of flattening the social pyramid. Rights of ownership were now to be respected.

Poland has no statutory remedy for the dispossessed. Claimants seeking redress in the form of the return of their property, restitution in kind, or compensation in respect of property nationalised under the auspices of the Warsaw Decree, The Renovation and Reconstruction Act, or the Agricultural Reform Decree must apply for a declaration of invalidity under Article 156 of the Civil Proceedings Code 1960, as per Figure 2 of the appendix. Article 156 permits the courts to invalidate decisions which were made in breach of jurisdiction (1(1)), without legal authority or in blatant breach of the law (1(2)), were not enforceable at the date of issue (1(5)), would result in a criminal act if enforced (1(6)), or contain defects rendering them invalid by law (1(7)). An applicant who is able to show that his agriculture land spanned 20 hectares rather than the 50 demanded by The Agricultural Reform Decree, for example, would be able to secure an annulment of the original decision to deprive him of his land. Similarly, an applicant who may demonstrate that his application for perpetual usufruct was filed in compliance with the Warsaw Decree and that, thus, he ought not to have been dispossessed, will too be able to seek an annulment under Article 156. Declarations which invalidate the seizure of property which did not originally fall within the scope of the Acts afford applicants the standing necessary to apply for the perpetual usufruct of the property in question. If this is not possible owing to intervening legal events (such as adverse possession) then a compensation claim may be filed against the State Treasury. As regards intervening legal events, the Supreme Court of Poland ruled in an en banc resolution in 2007 that, indeed, state control of real estate belonging to another could constitute legitimate independent possession leading to acquisition by prescription, but that the period required for adverse possession did not elapse if the owner could not effectively seek possession of the said real estate.24

24 Polish Supreme Court Case III CZP 30/07 (26 October 2007).

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The case for a new statutory remedy is easily made. The collapse of communism in Poland did not lead to the annulment of earlier legislation; the nationalisation laws 1944-1989 were issued by an internationally recognised government, and they altered property ownership permanently and irrevocably. Current provisions for the reprivatisation of state-seized land in Poland are highly exclusive: essentially only those whose property was seized in contravention of the law as it then stood are eligible for restitution in natura, in kind, or awards of compensation by the State Treasury. Individuals who ought to have been paid indemnifications but were not (such as those whose business were expropriated under the Nationalisation of Industry Act 1946) have no cause of action as their right to claim compensation expired in 1988.25 It is estimated that 70% of potential claimants’ suits would founder on account of the ‘legality’ of the seizure of their real property under the Acts.26 Even claimants who may show that their property did not fall within the scope of the Act under which they were deprived of it have no guarantee of success in the courts: the necessary administrative procedures are complex and time consuming, and many claims will be defeated by evidential uncertainty simply by virtue of the time that has elapsed since most of the Nationalisation Acts took widespread effect (60+ years). Indeed, the perceived unfairness of reprivatisation laws in Poland has caused efforts to be made in Parliament to introduce statutory provisions for the restoration of nationalised real estate, and it is this matter of how best to proceed in reforming reprivatisation law in Poland that will occupy the remainder of this study.

As has been noted several times Poland, unlike other former Eastern Bloc states has failed to implement statutory provisions for reprivatisation. This is not for want of trying: draft laws were promulgated in Parliament from 1992, and the latest attempt to introduce a reprivatisation Act stalled in 2001 with President Kwasniewski’s veto of a bill endorsed by the Sejm on grounds of unaffordability and the risk of creating social division.27 The bill 25 Piotr Stect, op cit. 364.26 Ibid, 371.27 Financial Times, 23 March 2001, 10.

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would have extended causes of action to those whose property was seized in keeping with the law as it stood at the time of appropriation, greatly broadening eligibility. Only those who were citizens of Poland as of 1999 would have been able to exploit the legislation, whose central feature was the equal division of expropriated property between state and true owner. Under this system any individual deprived of title by way of nationalisation Act would became co-proprietor of the same property under section 2(3) read in conjunction with section 8, coming to own a 50% stake.28 If the property had already passed to a third party, for example the small farmers allocated portions of larger swathes of farmland under the Agricultural Decree 1944, the state would issue reprivatisation coupons (state investment certificates) in its stead which represented 50% of the property’s value.29 The rejection of this bill at the Presidential level owed to two clear policy considerations: the cost and social ramifications of such an initiative.

In the interests of determining a workable solution for Polish reprivatisation, let us consider the expense Hungary’s approach to the restoration of nationalised real estate has incurred. The Hungarian Parliament passed, in 1991, an Act granting those who had property seized after 8th June 1949 partial compensation. This was followed in 1992 by another Act which extended the same entitlement to those whose properties were nationalised between 1st May 1939 and 8th June 1949. Only those who were Hungarian citizens at the time of proprietary loss or non-Hungarian citizens who were, as of the 31st December 1990, permanent citizens were entitled to claim.30 As is the case in Poland, if a claimant’s issue had been dealt with by way of international agreement he would not be eligible to claim under the Act. The Act defined property as all movable and immovable goods of inherent value, from precious stones to art works, and compensation was awarded by way of

28 Broniowski v Poland, ECHR Application No. 31443/96.29 Piotr Stect, op cit. 370.30 Gábor Czepek, Property Restitution/Compensation: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution/Source/Documents/HRTF/TR%2002.11/Pres_CZEPEK.pdf, accessed 14/05/2015.

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compensatory note or agricultural voucher. The maximum individual award was 5 million Forints (roughly £12,000), and Hungary had, by 1998, issued compensation notes with a nominal value of over 80 billion Forints (£190 million), roughly £27 million per annum.31 If we take Hungary’s GDP to be £87 billion,32 we can calculate that 1/3222th of Gross Domestic Product was spent on reprivatisation measures on average each year between 1991 and 1998.33 If similar levels of expenditure relative to GDP were witnessed in Poland, whose GDP stands at £342 billion,34 £106,875,000 would be spent annually on compensation pay-outs.35 The projected sum would account for 1/535th of annual governmental expenditure (which, according to 2014 figures was £57,240,483,91936).37 This, though only a rough projection, does not seem an unworkable figure, especially given that claims would likely be limited to Polish citizens as per the 2001 draft proposals. There is much evidence, however, to suggest that the Polish context is unique, certainly very different from that of Hungary, and that were the provisions of the 2001 bill actually codified the courts would be inundated by claims. Existing claims relating to the restitution of property in former territories beyond the Bug River alone, for example, numbered 82,000 as of 2003, their value approximately £2 billion.38 It is not difficult to imagine the number of claims that might arise were those whose property was nationalised lawfully given standing in the courts. One last issue should be admitted prior to a critical discussion of the state of Polish law regarding the reprivatisation of state-seized property: the possibility of class-action human rights litigation yielding satisfactory results for the dispossessed following the decision in Broniowski v Poland.31 Ibid, 6.32 World Bank GDP Indicator: http://www.data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD, accessed 14/05/2015.33 87,000,000,000 divided by 27,000,000 = 3222.34 World Bank GDP Indicator, op cit.35 342,000,000,000 divided by 3222 = 106,875,000.36 Poland Government Spending 1996-2015: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/poland/government-spending, accessed 25/05/2015.37 57,240,483,919 divided by 106,875,000 = 535.38 The Ministry of the Treasury of the Polish Republic, “Bug River Claims”: http://www.msp.gov.pl/en/restitution/bug-river-claims/118,Bug-river-claims.html, accessed 12/05/2015.

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The case of Broniowski v Poland concerned the restitution of real property in the former eastern provinces of Poland named ‘Kresy’, meaning ‘borderlands’.39 The claimant’s grandmother had been issued a certificate confirming her possession of property in Lwów (land of 400sq.m, house of 250sq.m), and her daughter declared inheritor of the property upon her death by the Cracow District Court in 1968. The daughter sought a declaration permitting her to purchase the right of perpetual usufruct of other land (in Wieliczka), and the cost of doing so was offset against the sum of compensation the Cracow Mayor’s office deemed appropriate in respect of the Lwów property. A governmental commission later discovered that the award corresponded to just 2% of the family’s real entitlement, and the appellant, the grandson, sought the full amount. Negotiations stalled, and in the interim the government passed a law discharging its obligations toward claimants seeking compensation for the loss of Bug River property. Broniowski alleged a breach of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, that his ‘right to credit’ i.e. compensation in lieu of the property abandoned in the former Polish territory, had not been satisfied.40 The European Court of Human Rights ordered all like cases to be halted so that it could grant an entire class of claimants a general, systematic remedy. The court held that the claimant’s right to compensation constituted a property right that was recognised by Poland as soon as it took it upon itself to pay such individuals. The right to compensation was considered a possession in itself for the purposes of Art. 1 Protocol No. 1 ECHR, a possession which the claimant had been prevented from enjoying peacefully owing to procedural defects tolerated at the highest level of government which hindered the restitution process.41 Though the decision in Broniowski granted former owners of real property across the Bug River means of securing compensation from the state, it is not a decision of any real significance with respect to real property nationalised under the major Acts. The Court was able to show a

39 An etymological relation of the Polish word ‘Ukraina’, which again connotes ‘border’ or ‘frontier’.40 Broniowski v Poland, at 175.41 Ibid, at 152.

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breach of Article 1 only in light of the government’s conduct following Poland’s ratification of Protocol No. 1 ECHR on 10 October 1994; no prior conduct was admissible as evidence in the court’s assessment of the breach. Additionally there had been a promise of compensation, and a right to it conferred by statute. The Polish government’s actions in the 1940s will not be judged in light of modern Human Rights Protocols, and thus those whose property was nationalised lawfully, an estimated 70% of all prospective applicants, remain bereft of any remedy.

It is submitted here that Polish law as it pertains to the reprivatisation of state-seized real property is too procedurally complex (see Fig. 2), too restrictive in terms of standing, and in much need of reform. The matter of how best to proceed is not straightforward. The draft reprivatisation bill of 2001 went too far in empowering all Polish citizens who had been deprived of property, and the notion of sharing land on the basis of co-ownership with the state was a disaster not just in terms of public understanding (several newspapers appeared to present the bill as freeing up 50% of all Polish property42), but also with regard to distancing the country from its socialist past. How unobtrusive, laissez-faire, and respectful of rights to private property could a state so unwilling to let go of nationalised assets that it arrived at this ‘half a loaf’ compromise claim to be? Equally, this open-to-all approach to reprivatisation surely anticipates huge expense; as shown by the number and value of the claims concerning Bug River property there could be an overwhelming surge in applications if lawful seizures were compensated for, not to mention the appeals that might follow in light of Broniowski. If the state assumed legislative responsibility for compensating all those who lost real property to the 25 or so Acts introduced between 1944 and 1989 there is no question that claims could arise out of purported breaches of applicants’ right to the peaceful enjoyment of this ‘right to credit’. A more moderate and conceptually sound blueprint for may be advanced for the reform of reprivatisation measures in Poland. Nationalisation measures belong to a broad category, and no review of existing measures or 42 Financial Times, 23 March 2001, 10.

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imagination of future ones has yet considered the merits of individual Acts. Acts such as the Renovation and Reconstruction Act 1959 and the Warsaw Decree 1945 were born of necessity, and in the absence of any fault on the part of the state (reasonable care taken to process applications for perpetual usufruct, the coordination of nationalisation efforts in conformance with settled law) there should be no requirement to compensate those whose real property passed into state ownership under their provisions. Acts that summarily dispossessed individuals of real property for purely ideological reasons, such as the Agricultural Decree and the Nationalisation of Industry Act should be viewed with less sympathy, and affected citizens should, where possible, be permitted to regain possession of such property or otherwise access at least a token sum of compensation in its stead. Though law might have been complied with in pursuance of these Acts, these expropriations are a national scandal by the standards Polish society wishes to set itself for the future. A select set of nationalisation Acts robbed Poland of its heritage and its people of rights to self-determination and a home, and only when the past is confronted and afflicted parties are permitted proper restitution will modern Poland be apt to flourish.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

STATUTES

Act on Renovation, Reconstruction, Completion and Expansion of Buildings [1959]

Law on the Nationalisation of Industry Act [1946]

The Civil Proceedings Code [1960]

The Polish Civil Code (Kodeks Cywilny)

The Polish Committee for National Liberation’s Decree [1944]

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The Warsaw Decree [1945]

CASES

Broniowski v Poland. ECHR Application No. 31443/96.

Case III CZP 30/07 (26 October 2007)

WEB PAGES

Gábor Czepek, Property Restitution/Compensation. http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution/Source/Documents/HRTF/

TR%2002.11/Pres_CZEPEK.pdf. Accessed 14/05/2015.

Leszek Zatya. Reprivatisation of Real Estate in Poland. http://www.codozasady.pl/en/reprivatisation-of-real-estate-in-poland.

Accessed 10/05/2015.

Marek Kozubal. “Dwa pytania od ziemiam”. Rzeczpospolita, http://www.rp.pl/artykul/1203092.html. Accessed 12/05/2015.

The Ministry of the Treasury of the Polish Republic. Bug River Claims. http://www.msp.gov.pl/en/restitution/bug-river-claims/118,Bug-river-

claims.html. Accessed 12/05/2015.

The World Bank. World Bank GDP Indicator. http://www.data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD. Accessed

14/05/2015.

Trading Economics. Poland Government Spending 1996-2015. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/poland/government-spending.

Accessed 25/05/2015.

ARTICLES

Piesowicz, Kazimierz. “Demograficzne skutki II wojny swiatowej”. Studia Demograficzne No. 1/87 (1987) pp.103-36.

The Financial Times, 23 March 2001. Pp. 10-14.

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Zijlstra, Kees. Privatisation in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. AP 220 EC/EW (97) 8.

PRINTED EDITIONS

Cooke, Elizabeth ed. Modern Studies in Property Law, Vol. 1: Property 2000. Oxford, 2001.

Davies, Norman. Heart of Europe. Oxford University Press, 1986.

Dean, Goschler, and Ther. Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. Berghahn Books, 2007.

Olczak-Ronikier, J. In the Garden of Memory. Krakow, 2002.

Pipes, Richard. The Unknown Lenin. Yale University Press, 1999.

Stubbs, John H. Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas. Hoboken, 2011.

Wasilkowski, Jan. Zarys prawa rzeczowego. Warsaw, 1963.

APPENDIX: ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: The Territorial Evolution of Poland

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(Source: Norman Davies, Heart of Europe)

Figure 2: Routes to Reprivatisation in Poland

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Warsaw Decree (1945)

Decree on Agricultural Reform (1944)

Renovation Act (1959)

Decree on the Western Provinces and Gdansk (1946)

Nationalisation of Industry Act (1946)

(Benedykt Wojciechowski, May 2015)

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100 Hectares +/Farmland of 50 Hectares+

Yes No

Legitimate property of the State Treasury

Nationalised regardless?

Yes No

No cause of action

50 workers+ per shift/output criteria met

Yes No

Declaration of invalidity

Nationalised w/compensation

(never paid). Compensation

period expires 1988.

Application for perpetual usufruct submitted before original deadline?

Yes No

Granted?

Yes No

Procedural impropriety?

State bears 50%+ of renovation costs?

Yes No

Expropriated on these grounds

regardless?

Application for perpetual usufruct Compensation claim against State Treasury