The current legislation on land protection in Slovakia with particular regard to the decision of the Slovak Constitutional Court on unconstitutional provisions of the Act on land acquisition

Abstract

The accession of the Slovak Republic to the European Union opened a whole new chapter in the country's history and brought dynamic changes to its land transfer legislation. In the Slovak Republic, the moratorium forbidding the purchase of agricultural land by foreigners expired in 2014. Following this period, the European Commission launched a comprehensive examination of the legal status of land acquisitions in the new Member States. The investigation revealed that certain provisions of the Slovak land regulation restricted the EU’s fundamental economic freedoms. Even before this revelation, Act no. 140/2014 Coll. on the acquisition of ownership of agricultural land had been the subject of numerous public debates. Consequently, the Slovak Constitutional Court annulled a significant part of the Act on land acquisition in its decision of November 14, 2018. This article introduces the current legislation on land protection in Slovakia and describes the aforementioned decision of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic in detail.