Recent trends in land turnover

The Ukrainian Bar Association Committees on Agricultural Law and Real Estate & Construction Law held a meeting on 23 February dedicated to recent legislative initiatives in the sphere of agricultural land turnover.

Yevhen Chernyak, deputy chairman of the NGO Public Movement Kripak shared his opinions regarding Draft Law On Turnover of Agricultural Land No. 5535 and the alternative Draft No. 5535-1. He explained the main points of the two proposed initiatives.

The first Draft provides for the launch of the land market in two stages. During the first phase in 2017-2019, a section of state-owned land will be sold on open electronic auctions that will enable the generating of a market price for land in all regions. Foreigners and legal entities would not be allowed to take part in these auctions. At the second stage, the market will be opened to the public. However, the Draft contains a restriction on the land purchase per customer, namely 200 hectares.

The second Draft envisages selling leasehold rights instead of land title selling. In this case the buyer will have all rights of the owner and will be able to sublet and to resell the right to lease for up to 49 years.

Volodymyr Nosik, professor, academic of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine noted that MPsshould suggest an alternative judicial model instead of previous legislative proposals.

Serhiy Kubakh, project consultant on land resources management (USAID) noted that the law on land turnover is not sufficiently coordinated with modern trends of power decentralization and deregulation of public administration. In his opinion, politicians have to develop a course and then lawyers will have to formalize it in legal terms. He also underlined that experts should resolve this issue as soon as possible because since the time of the moratorium 1 million Ukrainian citizens have died without taking advantage of their land title.