Sejm signs off on property legislation
By : Juliet D. Golden
After a decade of delays, the lower house of Parliament passed the long-awaited and highly controversial property restitution bill last week.
The contested bill provides mechanisms for compensating Polish citizens and their families for losses due to illegal expropriation of properties from 1944-1962. Under the bill voted in last week, former owners will get back 50% of the value of their seized property.
When possible, property will be returned in-kind. However, if the property has already been sold or is in private hands, former owners will receive compensation coupons worth the estimated value of their assets. Coupons can be used to buy state-owned real estate or they can be invested in a specially created investment fund.
For politicians who backed this bill, the passage of the new law not only represents an attempt to undo the wrongs of the communist era, it also offers a chance to bring to a close a painful chapter in recent Polish history. Inside Poland, the decade-long attempt to introduce a comprehensive property restitution bill has not only been a source of explosive politics, but also of legislative debacles. Over the past 10 years, more than a dozen draft bills have been shelved by successive ministries and Parliaments, placing Poland in the international spotlight as the last country in the former Soviet bloc to pass such legislation.
"After 10 years we finally have some solution," said Jan Wyrowinski, a Freedom Union (UW) deputy from Torun. "It's not the best, of course, but it's better than no solution at all."
While touted as a success by politicians, property restitution activists last week criticized the bill for providing too little for too few.
For former property owners, the bill falls short not only in terms of failing to provide 100% compensation, but also in terms of Polish Jews and other Poles living in the diaspora who lost property not only during the communist era, but also under the Nazis during World War II.
Under the law passed last week, two requirements restrict the number of potential claims that could be submitted. First, property owners had to be Polish citizens at the time the property was seized. In addition, they had to be registered as Polish citizens from Dec. 31, 1999 to be eligible to make claims related to lost property against the government.
"This law is not in accord with any international norms," said Miroslaw Szypowski, chairman of the National Coalition of Revindication Organizations (OPOR). "This law excludes everybody."
The lack of a restitution law has been a burning domestic issue. The filing of a class action suit against Poland in a U.S. federal court in Brooklyn, New York in June 1999 by 11 Jews seeking the return of property in Poland placed the unresolved restitution issue squarely on Poland's international agenda. In a hearing related to the case held in New York last month, lawyers representing Poland argued that the country is protected by sovereign immunity and cannot be tried in a U.S. court. The federal judge in the case, Edward Korman, who has presided over other holocaust restitution cases including the class action against Swiss banks that ended in a $1.6 billion negotiated settlement is due to decide whether to grant jurisdiction in the Polish case later this year.
In the aftermath of the bill's passage last week, lawyers representing Poland said it was too early to tell whether the exclusion of Jewish claims will pave the way for a separate negotiated settlement between the government and Jewish groups.
"I would have preferred that it was returned to everybody regardless of citizenship, (but) at least we have a clear situation now that Parliament has decided on the issue," said Witold Danilowicz, executive partner at law firm White and Case Poland, which represents the Polish government. "I am sure there will be pressure from Jewish groups to find some accommodation for them, but at least we can now say 'sorry, that's what Parliament said and that's it.'"
The bill received the backing of the ruling Solidarity Election Action (AWS) party and its former coalition partner, the centrist UW party in a 225-186 vote.
Deputies from the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and the Peasants Party (PSL) have been pushing to have the bill thrown out altogether or reduced in scope to minimize budget expenditures related to restitution compensation.
Before the bill becomes law, it must first be passed by the Senate and later signed by President Aleksander Kwasniewski.
The Treasury Ministry has estimated that the introduction of the law will cost the state zl. 47 billion ($11.46 billion). However, government officials have argued that the failure to introduce legislation could lead to individual settlements totaling as much as zl. 275 billion ($67 billion).
OPOR's Szypowski estimates that $400 million-$500 million in property has been returned to former owners who have proved that seizures were made in violation of existing communist nationalization laws.
Only two weeks ago, the Supreme Administrative Court upheld a 1998 Economy Ministry decision to return about eight hectares of land in the historic Wujek coal mine in Katowice to the Badura family, which ran a brick factory at the site. Family representatives submitted documents proving that the property was expropriated in violation of existing communist nationalization decrees because the family factory employed fewer than 50 workers and produced less than 2.5 million bricks a year. A 1946 nationalization law prohibited seizure of factories employing fewer than 50 workers and with a production capacity under 2.5 million units a year.
"For me the issue was clear cut," said Zbigniew Stec, director of the office dealing with property restitution claims in the Economy Ministry. "There was no (legal) basis for nationalization in this case."
Stec estimates that 3,000 individual restitution claims have been submitted to the Economy Ministry for consideration. Of the 1,500 cases already closed, Stec said the majority of decisions have led to the restitution of property to former owners.
