The Saeima adopts the law on the termination of forced divided property
Today, the Saeima adopted in its final reading the Law on Termination of Forced Shared Property in Privatized Apartment Buildings, which will determine the procedure for starting and implementing the process of creating a single property in the case of forced divided property, if an apartment building with privatized apartment properties is located on land owned by another person.
In the vote on this law, 56 deputies were “for” and 18 – “against”. Saeima member Regīna Lochmele (S) said in the debate that her Saskaņas Saeima faction does not support this law, as it is allegedly “unfair at its root”. She pointed out that the law will end forced shared ownership in privatized apartment buildings in the interests of landowners. They will have the opportunity to earn at least 200 million euros to “pay the land barons”, said the deputy. Her party member Sergej Dolgopolov (S) also said that this law does not solve the problem as a whole, which is said to have been created by the state, not the people. On the other hand, coalition politician Jānis Dombrava (NA) emphasized that shared ownership in privatized apartment buildings has been a problem for many decades and until now no tool has been developed to solve it. Dombrava thanked her colleagues who continued to work on this regulation and brought the law this far. The parliamentarian explained that in relation to cadastral values, it is important that this law cannot be contested later in the Constitutional Court, therefore, in his opinion, it would be correct to include an indisputable regulation in the law. He added that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) should not be “asleep” regarding this case, and a formula for calculating cadastral values should be prepared as soon as possible. According to the deputy, land for multi-apartment buildings with shared ownership should be valued at a much lower cadastral value, considering that it is a burden to use this land. He pointed out that the predicted cadastral land values show that TM intends to increase them by as much as 35% for individual properties. In his opinion, this is absolutely illogical and wrong. “This mistake should be corrected urgently and the calculation formula should provide that the land under the apartment buildings is a burden and should be brought closer to the market value, which is certainly lower than the cadastral value,” said the politician. Dombrava’s colleague Aleksandrs Kirstein (NA) added that the situation was the “purest” consequence of the Soviet occupation, because at that time the owners of large lands were arrested, killed and deported to Siberia, and buildings were built on their land, where apartments were allocated to those arriving from the Soviet Union . Currently, a large part of their descendants live in those apartments, Kirstein added. The law will enter into force on January 1, 2023. Deputy Māris Možvillo (“Independents”) proposed to speed up the deadline for the implementation of the law until July 1 next year, however, the majority of parliamentarians rejected this idea.
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