Top court rejects request to annul contested land fund law clauses

Budapest, December 7 (MTI) – The Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected a lower court’s request to annul certain clauses of the national land fund law and a government decree regulating the use of lands managed by the National Land Management Fund (NFA).

In a ruling issued in October, the Municipal Court of Budapest suspended a lawsuit involving the lease of land used earlier as an organic farm to a private company until the top court completed a review of the clauses and government decree at issue. The lawsuit in question is the Rural Development Centre of Kishantos, an organic farm in central Hungary, versus the NFA. The centre wants the court to declare that the land lease applications opened by NFA in 2012 and the bidding process were unlawful.

The Budapest court requested that the Constitutional Court declare the clauses and government decree in question unconstitutional. The court also ruled that the clauses in question were unconstitutional because the rules governing the acquisition and use of farmland should have been defined in a law approved by at least two-thirds of MPs rather than in a government decree.

It also appealed to the top court to declare that these clauses violate various international treaties and to annul them with retroactive effect, which the Constitutional Court also rejected in Wednesday’s ruling.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the Budapest court’s request was unjustified. The top court said the municipal court’s request pertained to a declaration of unconstitutionality by omission, which it ruled could not be submitted in the form of a judicial initiative. It also said the request had failed to present any constitutional arguments that would have warranted an examination of the unconstitutionality of the laws in question.

The farm ministry reacted to the ruling saying that the Constitutional Court had made it clear that the land lease applications and bidding process opened after 2010 were lawful. In its statement, the ministry expressed hope that the top court’s ruling would “bring an end to the domestic political attacks questioning the legal legitimacy” of the government’s land lease programme.

Greenpeace Hungary said in a statement that the Kishantos organic farm would turn to the European Court of Justice with its help over the top court’s ruling. Greenpeace said it stood by the municipal court’s earlier ruling that the clauses and government decree in question were in breach of the UN’s anti-corruption convention

Disputes have been ongoing over the land leases in Kishantos since late 2013. In April 2014 the new leaseholders started to plough up the fields at the local farms. The organic farmers of the German-backed Kishantos Rural Development Centre, however, said that the newcomers were not “legally in possession” of the area, as there were several legal disputes over rights to the land still under way.

The Kishantos Rural Development Centre was set up under an agreement between the Hungarian and German governments 16 years ago. It operated on 452 hectares of state-owned land and produced the highest-grade organic seeds, as well as offering courses to farmers and carrying out agricultural research.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI