The President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, signed the Act of 26 May 2023 amending the Act on local government, the Act on social forms of housing development, the Act on real estate management, the Act on tax on civil law transactions and certain other acts.
The Act provides for a change in the rules for determining the price of land property that is transferred to a perpetual usufructuary by applying market mechanisms when determining the purchase price of ownership rights to land owned by the State Treasury and local governments - the price of the property purchased by the perpetual usufructuary in the agreement will be set as at least 20 times the current annual fee for perpetual usufruct.
The perpetual usufructuary will be able to submit a request to conclude an agreement to acquire ownership rights within one year from the date of entry into force of the Act, and the claim will exclude, among others, undeveloped land or land used for maintaining allotment gardens.
The PINK Association has been appealing for two years We have submitted a request to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MRiT) to convert perpetual usufruct to ownership, including by submitting comments on the draft bill. However, we have received information that, due to the European Commission's requirements, a conversion similar to that for housing is not possible. Already in the final stages of the Sejm's proceedings, PINK appealed to MPs, speaking at a meeting of the joint Infrastructure Committee and the Local Government and Regional Policy Committee, to extend the deadline for exercising the right to acquire ownership of land, so that entrepreneurs can effectively benefit from de minimis aid. During the work on the Act, the Senate agreed with the position of PINK expressed in a letter to senators and at the meeting of the joint Senate Committees on Local Government and State Administration and the Infrastructure Committee, and introduced an amendment to the Act providing for an extension of the deadline for exercising the right to demand the sale of real estate granted for perpetual usufruct to a period of 36 months from the entry into force of the Act. A similar letter was sent to the Sejm, Sejm which, however, when finally considering the bill, rejected all the amendments proposed by the Senate.
The Act enters into force in its main scope on August 31, 2023.
The text of the act is available here.
PINK Newsletter vol. 3 | September 2023