Tribunal rules certain terms of cooperative flat sales unconstitutional

According to a ruling yesterday by the Constitutional Tribunal, certain provisions of the bill on housing cooperatives were deemed unconstitutional. In particular it referred to the terms of purchasing flats by their tenants for a price equal to 3% of their market value, as well as the obligation for cooperatives to establish preferential prices for the sale of studios to artists who are already tenants. As a result of the ruling, tenants will become owners of the flats they have occupied only after they have paid the full price, i.e. the difference between the flat's market value and a re-evaluated amount of their total payments made thus far. The ruling does not apply, however, to the apartments whose purchase procedure had been initiated before April. (Rzeczpospolita, p. A1) M. S.-C.