DEPRIVATION IN CROATIA (Summary)
Do you believe that the Constitutional Court
of Croatia, or the European Court of Human Rights (or any other court) is right, if it says that something is white, while everybody can see that it is doubtlessly black?! Do you think it is impossible that any court could be
so wrong? Many of us in Croatia know quite well that the "impossible" has
really happened!
Resolution 1096 (Para 10) of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (1996) says that the State should award a just compensation to original owners, in cases where the rights of tenants or current
owners would be violated by restituting the previously seized property in
integrum. In conformity with
that, the nationalized apartments in Croatia have not been restituted, but
have been cheaply sold to "tenants" i.e. tenantship-right
holders, who paid less than ten percent
of the market value. [Note: The "tenantship-right" was not a common tenancy or lease! A "tenant" was practically (or about 90 percent) an
owner of his apartment, which had thus been seized
forever from the original (nominal) private owner, by the laws in former Yugoslavia (SFRJ). The tenantship rights
lasted, and new tenantship rights have also been acquired, in the new Republic of Croatia, until 1996].
Moreover, by a Croatian law of 1996, a part of private
owners were compelled to cheaply sell
their apartments to the users of these apartments (even without the tenanatship
rights). This new seizure of the apartments has been approved by the Constitutional Court too, for the sake of social justice.
On the contrary, about 7000 of us, who are tenantship-right
holders in the so called "nominally-private occupied apartments" (i.e. apartments seized from original owners in former
Yugoslavia- SFRJ), have unjustifiably
been discriminated against by being not allowed to likewise cheaply buy our apartments! Also, we
and our families are deprived of our property (i.e. our tenantship right, abolished in 1996) which is worth about 90 percent of the market price of an empty apartment.
In this way, I am also being deprived of more than 100.000
EUR, which is almost all my property! Even though the nominal owner had offered (in 2002) to sell the apartment to me, the government has refused to grant the compensation (i.e. the money which I don't have). That compensation would make it possible
for me to cheaply buy my apartment in the same way as other tenantship-right holders had bought theirs (i.e. for about 10 percent of the price - payable by installments through 30 years).
(The deprived tenantship-right holders are compelled to sign contracts by which they
should temporarily become "protected lessees". I have NOT signed such a contract, because I resist being deprived of my permanent,
forever-inheritable tenantship right).
So far, the Constitutional or the European Court
has not helped us!
Our wrongly-abolished tenantship right must be restored to us, and we must get
the right to cheaply buy our apartments in the same way as others have bought theirs. The leading political
parties (HDZ, SDP) and others have repeatedly proposed in the Sabor (=parliament) that all tenantship-right holders must get
equal rights to cheaply buy the apartments in which they live, but they have not made actual drafts needed for changing the bad laws!
In 1991, by a new law, the publicly-owned apartments were sold to tenantship-right
holders for less than 10 percent of the market price. Many nominal owners would also agree that the seized (so-called "nominally-private")
apartments be cheaply bought by tenantship-right holders (for about 10 percent of the price) if
the State would pay the rest. But the State did not allow this just solution,
although it is the State's duty to make it possible! Instead of compensating
the original owners, the State unjustly violates our human rights and grabs our legally acquired property (i.e. our permanent,
forever-inheritable tenantship right)!
To read more, please, click on the links below:
