Romanian Constitutional Court Deems Amendments To Nationalized Houses Law Constitutional

The Constitutional Court solved the notifications regarding the unconstitutionality of the Law amending and improving Law 10/2001 on the legal status of some buildings taken over abusively between March 6, 1945 and December 22, 1989.

The Democratic Liberal Party in October filed litigation at the Constitutional Court to the amendments brought to the Nationalized Houses Law.

President Traian Basescu urged lawmakers in July to reexamine the law amending the normative act regarding the buildings seized during the communism regime.

Basescu thinks the law offers no solutions whatsoever, adding it is only a source of illegal gains.

Basescu also explained that, under Law 112, this type of properties were sold at book value, while the law sent for promulgation stipulates compensations to be paid by the state at the market price.

Basescu said the law favors the political clientele which got hold of properties.

The amendment brought to the law on nationalized houses, adopted by the Chamber of Deputies late June, was initiated by the Conservative Party (PC) and stipulates the buildings seized during the communist regime and subsequently sold by the state will no longer be returned in kind and the rightful owners will be paid compensations.

Conservative leader Dan Voiculescu urged Basescu to pass this law, stressing it neither excludes nor ignores the owners, as they will be paid compensations for the buildings they once owned until seized by the communists.

The lawmakers rejected in October, by 117 votes in favor, 79 against and 28 abstentions, the report of the legal commission the reexamination at the request to reexamine the nationalized houses law. Eugen Nicolicea, who led the meeting, explained after the voting that the law will be sent back to the president in its initial form.

Calin Tariceanu, the Prime Minister at the time, said then the vote expressed in the Chambers of Deputies on the nationalized houses law can bring about a long row of trials at the European Court for Human Rights, for breaking the constitutional right to private property.