Restitution of Properties and Government Responsibility

The center-left Government in Bucharest on Wednesday will take responsibility for a bill on the restitution in kind or in money equivalent of the property confiscated during the communist regime, which will involve seeking a vote of confidence in Parliament. The amendments to the property restitution law have been made at the request of the European Court of Human Rights, that has to deal with a large number of complaints by Romanian citizens.

The Liberal Democratic Party, the main opposition party, has criticized the bill and has announced that, in case it is passed by Parliament, they are prepared to file a censure motion against it or to submit it to the Constitutional Court. Referring to the Liberal Democrats’ announcement to introduce a censure motion, Prime Minister Victor Ponta said he would rather see them come up with concrete proposals regarding the property restitution law.

Victor Ponta: “Bottom line, filing a censure motion means pretending you are in opposition. I can understand the fact that they are criticized by the media for not doing any constructive work, but do they really have any solution to the restitution problem? It doesn’t seem like they do, and in that case they only stir the waters to draw attention.”

The new bill stipulates the property restitution in kind wherever that is possible, but only to the former owners and their heirs, and compensations granted in annual installments as well as the taxation of litigious rights by 85%. If the value of compensations has already been set, payment will be made within five years, starting 2014, while in the case of unsolved files, compensations will be paid within seven years, as of 2017.

Victor Ponta says that experts with the European Court of Human Rights have agreed to this new strategy. The new bill reduces to 10 years the period in which returned buildings hosting schools, hospitals and culture institutions can be further used for this purpose. The Government in Bucharest hopes that the new bill will resolve, once and for all, an issue that has been affecting Romanian society for over 60 years now. The Romanian state has so far paid compensations to former owners worth 5 billion Euros, while another 8 billion Euros are still to be paid.

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