Land Relations in Crimea October, 2006
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Land Relations in Crimea October, 2006 1 Abbreviations The ARC The Autonomous Republic of Crimea NSDC National Security and Defense Council (of Ukraine) FDP Formerly Deported People 2 Contents PRIMARY FINDINGS......................................................................................................................................... 4 The analytical part of the report ..................................................................................................................... 4 Materials presented in the appendices.......................................................................................................... 10 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................... 12 REFORMING THE LAND RELATIONS....................................................................................................... 13 Available land: general information ............................................................................................................. 13 Background information................................................................................................................................ 13 Some peculiarities of legal support................................................................................................................ 14 Results of the reform ...................................................................................................................................... 15 ADDRESSING THE LAND ISSUE: THE POLITICAL ASPECT............................................................... 20 Indicators of ineffectiveness........................................................................................................................... 20 Absence of a unified approach....................................................................................................................... 25 Growth of ethno-political radicalism ............................................................................................................ 32 NATIONAL ASPECT OF LAND RELATIONS............................................................................................. 35 Forms an dynamics of protest activity.......................................................................................................... 35 Reasoning of the parties ................................................................................................................................. 39 Limited opportunities for reaching concord ................................................................................................ 43 THE PRINCIPAL CONDITIONS FOR THE PROBLEM SOLUTION...................................................... 48 APPENDICES..................................................................................................................................................... 54 Official statistical data.................................................................................................................................... 54 Public opinion on land issues ......................................................................................................................... 65 Crimean mass media on the land issue ......................................................................................................... 69 3 PRIMARY FINDINGS The analytical part of the report Reforming the land relations 1. The land reform in Crimea reached its active phase in 1999. By 1st October 2006, 220800 people received property rights for land shares (agricultural land plots). Out of these, 217400 people received certificates, 171000 people collected the documentation for the land title deeds that would be exchanged for certificates, and 129700 people received land title deeds. The citizens also received 624361 land plots of 169032 hectares in total area. Out of these, 61% of land plots were allocated with the purpose of private housing construction and maintenance, 27,2 % for gardening, 9,2 % - for private farming, 2,6 % - for commercial activities, gardening and farming. 2. The process of the land reform in the ARC closely follows that of Ukraine, but has two important peculiarities. - The first peculiarity is the mass return of Formerly Deported People – Crimean Tatars – to Crimea. Prior to deportation, many of these people lived on the South Coast of Crimea (further on referred to as “South Coast”), but after the repatriation have no opportunity to resettle there. - The second peculiarity is the price for South Coast land. This land costs much more (a few times more) than land in other regions, and this leads to rampant corruption in the process of decision making as to land allocation. 3. The process of the reform was complicated by the fact that during the rise of private property and land market the land is being distributed for free. Land legislation is not well developed: some legal norms contradict each other, strict terminology is lacking, some by-laws are out of date and are not used, some basic laws necessary for the Land Code functioning have never been adopted. This naturally leads to “individual case management”, making specific decisions in each particular case and creates preconditions for corruption. At the same time, there are no administrative, pre-trial mechanisms for disaffirmation of erroneous and illegal decisions within the legislation. 4. The following positive results were achieved in the course of the land reform: - the land market began its formation - the opportunity for more effective land use has been created - the investment activity of citizens and groups of citizens has increased - the “construction boom” created jobs and contributed to infrastructure development in recreational Crimea. 4 5. At the same time, the reform of land relations had some negative consequences. Among these are: - the build-up of tension in rural areas due to the fact that only one third of rural inhabitants became members of Collective Agricultural Enterprises (CAE) - later this situation was resolved by a decree of the President of Ukraine. Another reason for this tension was the difference in size and quality of the allocated agricultural land plots. - the aggravation of ethnic tension, since the Crimean Tatars turned out to be the social group which was most frequently deprived in the process of agricultural land shares distribution. - absence of a land market and lack of direct access to farm machinery resulted in underuse of effective farming opportunities (for example, it is not possible to get a mortgage). - lands being purchased in shadow. After the end of the moratorium on selling the land, this can lead to strong social consequences that can be hardly predicted. - absence of the land cadastre and other necessary elements of land market is conducive for speculation with land plots. - the disproportion and violations that took place during the allocation of land plots, provoke land squatting. - distribution of land for free discords with the developing land market - budget suffers substantial losses because land tax rate (as well as rental rate) remain set much too low. The political aspect of addressing the land issue Performance analysis of land reforms shows that the land market in Crimea is underdeveloped, the effectiveness of decrees by the central government is low, resource and management support for these decrees is, in general, absent. One of the consequences of such situation is the absence of the land cadastre, which, in its turn, means that the “rules of the game” are lacking as well as effective state policy. The legislative base is insufficient, and the potential for law enforcement is not high. This leads to the possibility of law violations that seriously harm the national budget. Thus, there is a broad scope of problems which arose during implementation of the land reform. They could have been addressed with the help of consistent state policy. Factors that lead to the absence of such policy today (!): elections of deputies to the representative government bodies at all levels, competition between the central government bodies and the leading political parties after the elections, disagreement in authority and spheres of influence of government bodies at different levels, complex of political, administrative and ethnic components influencing the decisions taken in this sphere etc. A more comprehensive analysis of the situation shows: in autumn of 2006, main governmental institutions entered an even fiercer struggle for ascendancy over the situation in Crimea. In this struggle, the Presidential administration chose the way of political pressure on government bodies in the ARC and elite groups that had formed those bodies, whereas the Cabinet of Ministers (of Ukraine) worked predominately on increasing the controllability of the Republic’s economy and granted real financial preferences to the region. The public support for these institutions in Crimea has various levels and in many respects is based on ethnic affiliation: 5 - The President of Ukraine and the institutions affiliated with this post have little support in Crimea and are mainly supported by the Crimean Tatar population. - The Cabinet of Ministers and institutions affiliated with it are widely supported; mainly by the Russian- speaking population. The struggle for authority between the central governmental institutions has an ambivalent effect on the situation in Crimea: on the one hand it contributes