Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Experts from the Institute of Macroeconomic and Regional Research (IMRI) studied foreign experience in carrying out land reforms in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia), the process of land reform began with the adoption of the Land Law in 1991 and the Law on the Transformation of Collective Farms in 1992.

The chosen approach to land reform was to restore the ownership structure as it was in 1948 before the communist government came to power, but after the land reform carried out in 1946–1947.

Because the land and other assets of cooperative members were often not formally expropriated, in most cases after 1991 formal owners and their successors were able to take possession of their land through the informal process of expropriating their land from cooperative farms.

In relation to state farms, where in most cases the land was formally expropriated from former private owners, a formal and legal restitution procedure was carried out. The Land Fund was created in 1992, and at the initial stage of the restitution process, management of state agricultural lands of state farms was transferred to the fund.

Only Czech citizens had the right to land restitution, and initially restitution was also limited to permanent residents of the country. The last restriction was lifted by the Constitutional Court in 1995.

In most cases, the procedure for restitution of state agricultural lands was administrative.

If the Land Trust accepted the claim, the land was returned and land rights were registered.

Only in cases of disagreement over the legality or scope of the claim was the Ministry of Agriculture or

Court. If physical restitution was not possible, compensation was paid to the person entitled to it.

Results

In total, between 1991 and 2003, 231 thousand claims for restitution were filed, of which 98.6% were satisfied by the end of 2003.

The land reform process in the Czech Republic has led to the restoration of the highly fragmented property structure that existed before 1948, with an average agricultural plot size of 0.4 hectares.

The majority of owners who received land back after the land reform are not interested in agriculture and, due to the fragmentation of property and the widespread prevalence of joint ownership, in practice they often only have the opportunity to continue to lease land to large corporate farms that have replaced collective farms or state farms in this area.

In 2005, 86% of the total agricultural land in use was leased from owners. In 2007, about 0.45 million hectares (or 13% of used agricultural land) remained under the management of the Land Fund.

Slovakia

In Slovakia (then Czechoslovakia), land reform followed the same path as in the Czech Republic until both countries were created in 1993.

The land reform approach was to restore the ownership structure as it was in 1948 before the communist government came to power, but after the land reform carried out in 1946-1947.

State agricultural lands were officially returned. The deadline for filing a formal application for restitution was the end of January 1993. The actual owner of the land (often a cooperative farm or the state) had 60 days to respond to the demand and enter into an agreement to return the property.

In total, about 124 thousand original owners demanded restitution of 180 thousand hectares. The size of the claimed land averaged less than 2 hectares.

Cooperatives were supposed to transform into private legal entities with transparent ownership relations before the beginning of 1993. New "private" cooperatives were often formed, which in practice continued the agricultural activities of the earlier socialist cooperatives through lease agreements with private owners who had repossessed their land from the former cooperatives or received back land rights through restitution.

Results

The agricultural structure of Slovakia continued to be completely dominated by large corporate farms, which had replaced socialist cooperatives. In 2005, 91% of agricultural land was rented.

The land reform process in Slovakia has led to the restoration of a highly fragmented ownership structure with an average size of agricultural land plots of 0.45 hectares and an average of 12-15 co-owners per plot.

Joint ownership of land is usually a bottleneck for the development of the land market, since it is impossible to dispose of the land due to the need for the consent of all co-owners. Thus, leasing to large farms that replaced cooperatives and state farms continued. In addition, there were serious problems with unknown owners of agricultural land in Slovakia.

In 2006, 7% of agricultural land remained in state ownership, and about 23% remained with unknown owners.

Both categories were administered by the Land Trust and were often leased to large corporate farms.

State land could be privatized through sale, but this did not apply to land whose ownership was unknown.
 
Daria Ilyina,

IMRI project manager

Alexey Kim,

leading researcher at IMRI