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The Association of Expropriated Property Owners (ZLRP) establishes that the restitution of property to original owners in the Republic of Slovenia is more and more discriminatory. In the period of the Act's implementation, the Republic of Slovenia has namely been methodically changing the restitution conditions to the detriment of the expropriated persons. Since 1998, the state has been particularly intensively worsening the legal position of claimants entitled to be restituted the property. Thereby it is trying to restitute as little property to as small number of rightful claimants as possible, and thus only seemingly fulfil the requirements of the EU and NATO after the successful completion of the denationalization process. In the ten years of property restitution, the denationalization opponents often succeeded in hindering the implementation of the Act in all three branches of government - the legislative, executive and judicial one. - By outvoting, the
National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia has been self-sufficiently
negatively amending the Denationalization Act and also adopting other
acts which aggravated the timely and fair restitution of property.
Pursuant to the official data of the RS Government, up to the present it has been adjudicated about slightly more than a half of denationalization claims. This figure includes positive as well as negative decisions. But the non-transparency of governmental reports fails to present a clear picture about the implementation of denationalization. Therefore, in Slovenia and abroad different data on property restitution are cited - most frequently for the needs of the daily politics. The obligation of the RS Government to complete the denationalization procedures at the first administrative level until the end of 2002 explains nothing about the actual and final restitution of property. Pursuant to the opinion of ZLRP, the repeating appellate paths and unfavourable attitude of the authority to the actual restitution of property give no hope for the property restitution process to be successfully completed in 2002. Slovene expropriated persons no more believe the unreal deadlines and various promises since the only criterion for them is the final and non-discriminatory restitution of their property. III. Expropriated persons establish that as rightful claimants entitled to denationalization they were discriminated against in several ways during the entire period of the validity of the Act. 1. A severe violation of constitutional rights is caused by the modification of the DENA during its implementation and by additional devaluation with subsequent parallel acts. The conditions of restitution are also being modified by various new instructions of ministries and changing court practice. This means the violation of Articles 2 and 14 of the RS Constitution as well as of the principle of justness and benevolence. The consequence of all this is that in different periods of restitution rightful claimants have been differently treated - in practice worse year by year. 2. Pursuant to the DENA, the already restituted property is not always equal to all the rest private property and the legal treatment of original owners is discriminatory. The state takes the right to set special conditions for a part of the restituted property (apartments, business premises, forests) which are unconstitutional (Articles 33, 67 and 69 of the RS Constitution) and limit owners in using their property. The social state (Article 2 of the RS Constitution) unjustifiably shifts its obligations to the shoulders of denationalization claimants and thus discriminates against them compared to all other private owners in the state. Therefore, such restitution of property is merely formal and can be deemed neither as a part of the volume of the restituted property nor as one of the fairly fulfilled obligations. Such treatment means the violation of Article 1 of the 1st Protocol of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which speaks about the right to use the property. 3. The Slovene Compensation Society (SCS) issues bonds for the property which is not restituted in kind. This fund was founded by the RS Government, but so far Slovenia has not assumed the guarantee for these securities. This means that in case of the fund's illiquidity the expropriated persons have no assurance for the actual payment of compensation. This is the reason why the owners of bonds are discriminated against compared to the claimants whose property is restituted in kind. The bonds will be paid out as late as 2016 and without the guarantee of the state such a remote compensation may only be an empty promise. 4. A clear example of the discriminatory treatment of claimants can be observed in recovering building plots which were nationalized under the act in 1958 and taken away from the use of original owners after 1963. Until 2000 the expropriated persons were entitled to restitution. With a controversial court decision, the same year the conditions for restitution completely changed so that despite the provision of the DENA (Article 3) such nationalized property is not being restituted any more at all. This is happening in the final phase of the Act's implementation and thereby the constitutional rights of citizens to equal treatment before the law (Article 14 of the RS Constitution) are brutally violated and simultaneously the percentage of the already "solved cases" is successfully increasing. 5. Slovene expropriated persons are also exposed to moral discrimination. Due to the international pressure to meet the political criteria in order to enter the EU and NATO, representatives of authority recourse to the disqualification of their own citizens. In foreign countries they proclaim that it was collaborationists, i.e. supporters of the enemy who occupied the country, who were dispossessed of the property. They suppress the truth that this property was taken away from all citizens who were better-off, regardless their political orientation. This lie is a severe offence to all Slovenes who were unjustly deprived of their property, honour and sometimes also lives. Instead of apologizing for its immoral acts, the state today justifies them by dragging the names of former victims through the mud again. All these years, in the pro-government oriented media the denationalization is presented as a negative phenomenon through which claimants are receiving property from the state as a kind of a present to which in the majority of cases they are not entitled at all. The restitution of property is not treated as a moral obligation of the state to return what was stolen. Such reporting presents the violation of Article 63 of the RS Constitution which prohibits the stimulation of hatred and intolerance. 6. The establishment
of citizenship, as a preliminary denationalization issue for the restitution
of property, also includes the discriminatory elements. Promulgation of
Slovenes as persons of German nationality is going on without firm evidence
which consequently means the discrimination against the not yet established
number of expropriated persons of Slovene origin. The Republic of Slovenia will not be able to join the company of European democratic countries on equal terms, if it fails to immediately eliminate the reactionary communist mentality regarding the nationalized property and its restitution. Pursuant to the above stated, the discriminatory, unjust and overdue restitution of the nationalized property to original owners already acquires forms of an informal conspiracy. Considering the fact that the government is persisting in this situation, it will be the competent courts that will have to adjudicate how brutally here particularly Articles 2, 14, 15, 18, 33, 63, 67 or 69 of the RS Constitution are infringed, because "Slovenia is a democratic republic" (Article 1 of the RS Constitution) and it is no longer the property of revolutionary conspirators. Slovene expropriated persons are clearly aware of this change and therefore firmly demand their rights.
The ZLRP has always been actively involved in searching for solutions for an accelerated and just denationalization, and for this reason also this time proposes the necessary measures for the elimination of discrimination in the restitution of property. 1. Judgements of higher courts (administrative, supreme) which are discriminatory and contrary to the RS Constitution cannot be contractually binding for lower administrative and court levels. In the Slovene legal system (in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon precedent system), the viewpoints and legal opinions of principle are not legally binding. Such explanation shall be communicated by the Ministry of Justice also to courts and administrative units. 2. Parallel acts cannot harmfully influence the implementation of the DENA. In its Judgement U-I 341/94, as from 3 November 1997, the RS Constitutional Court adjudicated that parallel acts may not encroach upon the legal condition of denationalization claimants because this would "mean encroachment upon the constitutional principle of the legal state (Article 2) and aside from that of course also upon the principle of equality (Article 14) of denationalization claimants". The RS Government shall draw the attention of those implementing the DENA to this standpoint of the RS Constitutional Court in order to stop the so far exercised discriminatory practice. 3. The RS Government shall propose the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia to assume the state guarantee for bonds of the SCS and prevent from the discrimination against the owners of compensation bonds. 4. The RS Government shall carry out the revision of those instructions to administrative workers which complicate the procedures, protract the implementation of the DENA or illegally deny the claimants' right to the restitution of property. 5. All property which is restituted in the denationalization process must be immediately made equal to all other private property in the Republic of Slovenia. The RS Constitution contains no provision which would be separating the property pursuant to its origin. The present condition in this field is non-European and unconstitutional. It is necessary to adopt adequate legal and practical solutions in order to stop the discriminatory and restrictive treatment of property and owners. 6. The state of Slovenia shall declaratively condemn and regret the expropriation of citizens after the World War 2 and apologize to all involved persons for the caused harm. The RS Government shall deny the statements of its representatives who were unscrupulously accusing Slovene expropriated persons of collaboration with the enemy. 7. When establishing the Yugoslav citizenship of expropriated persons in the period of nationalization, the actual condition in that period shall be taken into account. The Yugoslav revolutionary legislation shall not be used for discrimination against the former citizens who were not retroactively acknowledged the citizenship in 1948. The unproved and politicized assessment of the state administration that an expropriated person is a "person of German nationality" and as such as a rule disloyal, already in its basis discriminates against numerous former Yugoslav citizens and original owners. With adequate instructions, the RS Government shall uniformly regulate this field in order to prevent from administrative units to without evidence further on proclaim Slovenes as Germans and consequently as disloyal citizens, and from the unjustified encroaching upon the rights of expropriated Yugoslav citizens to the restitution of property. Undoubtedly, it is intolerable for the state that up to this day it has not solved the issue of citizenship as a preliminary issue yet, if we know that the deadline for filing denationalization claims was 7 December 1993! 8. The ZLRP already several times recognized the need for an international supervision over the implementation of the valid legislation in the Republic of Slovenia. One of the most obvious cases of the designed non-implementation is exactly the DENA, although it is not the only one. The ZLRP is more and more certain that considering the present attitude of the authority to the fair restitution of property, the DENA will not for a long time be implemented although all reasonable terms already expired. For this reason, the ZLRP again expresses its wish for an appropriate service to be appointed by the EU which would assess the actual condition in the field of property restitution in the Republic of Slovenia. The unsuccessful restitution of property is namely not only the problem of the present citizens of the Republic of Slovenia, but also of a certain number of other persons who are today citizens of the EU Member States, USA or third countries. This report on discriminatory incidents in the restitution of property was prepared by the ZLRP for the Slovene public, authority holders in the Republic of Slovenia and international forums in the EU, NATO and USA. NOTE
Vice-presidents of
the ZLRP: Acting president of the ZLRP:
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