Taking – and still not giving back?

The policy is surrounded by as many myths as controversies and misunderstandings, but the small reprivatisation act has been devised to change all that. The word ‘small’ is very appropriate here; however, the word ‘act’ is not. The new regulations have been introduced as a short amendment and the act is generally associated with a large document that comprehensively settles the terms of a given issue. In the case of Warsaw reprivatisation, the legislator has turned out to be a disciple of minimalism. The new law is covered by just four articles. Of course you could say that size doesn’t matter, but in this case brevity will not work. The Polish parliament has been extraordinarily productive of late in terms of providing us with new regulations. In 2015 alone it introduced 30,000 pages of shiny new red tape. The new regulations for the restitution process in Warsaw fit into just two pages. However, this is a kind of success. After all, the legislature has been kind enough to take up the topic only a quarter of a century since the political transformation. This procrastination could be understandable if the issue of restitution wasn’t so important. Unfortunately, it is. According to Warsaw city council, the zone covered by the legislation has an area of app. 14.1 ha, which constitutes 27.4 pct of the current area of the city. Since 1990, over 7,000 applications and 4,000 returns have been made and the capital city has paid out PLN 1.13 bln in compensation. More than 3,500 cases are currently pending in Warsaw centred on the return of properties (more than a hundred of which are educational facilities) as well as more than 3,800 compensation proceedings, while the liabilities of these are estimated at several billion złoty. Thus it is not surprising that Warsaw city council is satisfied with the new law because, as officials explain, it will enable them to renovate rundown buildings, limit the practice of trading the claims and to put an end to the process of taking possession of the properties through a ‘court appointed administrator’ or curator; there will also be app. 2,000 fewer cases – the so-called ‘sleepyheads’ for state officials to deal with. However, the heirs of the former owners of the property confiscated by the communists under the post-war Bierut decree are rather less than sanguine about the amendments to the law, pointing out that the issue is being dealt with in a rather random manner – and this could make the claims impossible to fight for. There are also those who consider the new regulations to be sanctioning the same kind lawlessness characterised by the post-war decree. In addition there is also the fact that the new regulations do not contain anything about the claims or about the verification of the return decisions issued so far – at least some of these have engendered some serious controversy. The small act is certainly a step in the right direction, but the current lack of a comprehensive resolution of the restitution issue could encourage new ways of circumventing the law. And this is more than likely in such a messy legal system as we have in Poland. Let’s hope that the latest amendment to the last amendment will not close the chapter on this matter.