Nuosavybės teisių į miestų žemę atkūrimas Lietuvoje ; Restoration of urban land ownership rights in lithuania

Abstract

The institute of legal relations considering restoration of ownership rights is a specific constituent part of Lithuanian legal system, formation of which in Lithuanian law was determined by historical circumstances: the aggression that was inflicted on the independent Lithuanian Republic by occupant authorities in 1940, whereas the outcome of these actions was nationalization of all privately owned real estate. In 1990 when the independence of Lithuania was restored and the fact that property ownership rights of citizens, which were gained before occupation, are indefeasible and continuous was officially acknowledged, appropriate standard legal regulations were passed which would regulate these legal relations. Upon the order and conditions of these new regulations the restoration of ownership rights commenced. In Lithuania this process already continues since 1991 and, unfortunately, by the end of 2007 it is not yet fully completed. In this master's thesis the institute of restoration of ownership rights is analyzed through one of its constituent parts, i.e. by analyzing restoration of land ownership rights in the cities. This specific field has been chosen as an object of analysis because current situation in Lithuania allows coming to a valid conclusion that in the cities restoration of ownership rights is pursued at the slowest rates (e.g., in the city of Vilnius ownership rights were restored to only 11.37% of overall land, which is claimed in citizens' applications). When investigating this specific legal relations group of restitution, firstly the order of realization of the right to restore ownership rights to the land in the cities was thoroughly analyzed. In this particular part of the thesis the following issues were described and analyzed: which citizens are granted the right by the law to restore ownership rights; under what terms, what order and what documents the citizens are required to submit seeking to materialize this right; which government institutions and under what terms must they consider applications and make decisions about restoration of ownership rights to city land; what are the measures to restore ownership rights to previously owned land in the city; what kind of city land is classified as redeemable by the state and what are the ways for the state to compensate for this land. Having analyzed the order of implementation of the right to restore ownership rights to previously owned land in the city and its legal regulations, it was further gone into the causes which raise difficulties for this process to be carried out properly and timely, so that citizens can realize their right granted to them by the law to retrieve the land which is in the city territory or receive a proper compensation for it. The order and peculiarities of compensation for the land with securities, as one of the ways to pursue restoration of ownership to city land, is provided in the last part of the thesis.