Page 3
More on Groups 1 and 2
In
SFRY, the owners of all private flats, that had been rented before 1945, lost forever almost all their rights on these
flats, and these rights have been acquired forever by the holders of SP (="stanarsko pravo"). In a vast majority of cases,
that happened against the owners' will. The SP comprised permanent, inheritable, exclusive right to possess the flat, to use
it, etc. Tens of thousands of such flats were registered in land registers as "social" ("public") property, and they are the
so-called "nationalized flats" (=Group 1). However,
private owners of a few thousand of such flats remained registered in land registers, although they too lost forever all the
rights that were included in SP and given to SP-holders. (See below!*) These
are the so called "private occupied flats" (=Group 2).
In both these groups, the owners
have not been given market-value
compensations. The occupants, in both these groups, were compelled to accept and keep the SP, because they have been denied
the SP in any other flats. The occupants are not guilty of anything, they had no choice.
In either group, seizing the owners' rights
against their will and without a market-value compensation is contrary to the Croatian Constitution (from 1990), but this
Constitution does not apply to any of these cases, because all that happened before 1990 (see the Decision of the Constitutional Court
of Croatia No. U-I-673/1996
of April 21, 1999, Narodne Novine No. 39
/ 1999, on Page 1). Therefore, there is no justified reason to abolish or diminish the
SP in either group (which abolishment, moreover, is contrary to Resolution 1096 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe and to the Annex G of the international Agreement on Succession Issues). However, although the nationalization
and the SPs in Group 1 have not been abolished (which is correct), the SPs in Group 2 are wrongly and discriminatorily abolished
by the Law on Renting Flats (1996)!!!
It follows that all holders of SP and their families should keep their acquired
rights forever, in accordance with Resolution 1096, while the original owners should be compensated by the state.
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* By the Law on Housing Relations ("Zakon o stambenim odnosima,"=ZSO, 1974), the private owner of a flat gave the SP to the occupant
of the flat by a contract ("ugovor
o korištenju stana" ="contract to use the flat"). This owner could decide whether he/she wanted
or not to conclude such a contract and give the SP of his/her own free will. Nobody
was forced in any way to conclude such a contract. A vast majority of private
owners did not want to give the SP and they decided not to conclude such contracts.
An owner, who concluded such
a contract, declared, by doing so, his/her own free will to give the SP to the occupant of the flat.
If the contract ("ugovor o korištenju stana") was not concluded in
one month, the only consequence was, that the state housing authority ("SIZ stanovanja") issued a decree
which substituted the contract, and in such a case the SP was acquired against the owner's will. (See: ZSO, 1974, Article 86).
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