Restitution of Nationalised or Collectivised Agricultural Lands and Forests – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lost in Transition

Abstract

In the former Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter: SRBH) agricultural and forest land, as important natural resources of any economy, were the subject of double restrictions. One was a result of the social attachment of property, and is immanent not only to socialistic regimes. The other restriction was the result of socialist ideology, which meant that these important economic resources could only to a limited extent be privately owned — and that everything beyond prescribed limits was nationalised. There was also a vast range of other reasons for the nationalisation of these goods. The transformation process entailed the removal of restrictions on the extent of ownership of these properties, and this was done within the framework of the constitutional reforms in the former Yugoslavia (1989/90). Still in the SRBH, after these constitutional reforms it was clear that denationalisation and restitution should follow. In 1991 it was forbidden by law to dispose of nationalised property. The measures of denationalisation and restitution of nationalised property are the focus of this article. First, a short analysis is given of the history of nationalisation and confiscation of property in the former Yugoslavia after the World War II. Since the end of the 20th Century (1995), Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) has been an independent state which has performed crucial reforms within the process of transformation. But the denationalisation measures regarding agricultural and forest land are still pending. One of the reasons for that is the fact that BH is composed of three separate legal orders: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Srpska and Brčko District of BH. All three legal orders have been thoroughly analysed, since the legislative competencies for regulating denationalisation are merely given to these constituent parts of BH. Due to the political tensions and problems, it is unlikely that a framework law will be passed. The unclear ownership of agricultural and forest land (no criterion for the division of state ownership has yet been established) led to the OHR imposing a ban on the disposal of these assets in 2022. The consequence of the long absence of restitution and the coexistence of two restraining orders, which have different reasons and follow different goals, is a lack of legal certainty. The article concludes that in Bosnia  and Herzegovina  the final implementation of the transformation process in general, and restitution as a part of it, still faces many obstacles — lack of legal basis, facts established during the war, processes that are not centralised and coordinated due to the state structure, adoption of legal solutions that may jeopardise restitution in general, and restitution of agricultural land and forests as well. In brief: Bosnia and Herzegovina is still lost in transition.