Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on Dec. 20 passed a law extending the country’s farmland sales moratorium until Jan. 1, 2020. The ban on an open land market was supported by 231 members of parliament.
The nationwide ban on selling farmland was initially issued back in 2001, with the notion that the ban would be lifted as soon as a new Land Code of Ukraine was adopted. But the moratorium has been regularly extended ever since.
The current legislation bans the sale of agricultural land, yet allows it to be leased for cultivation. On May 22, the European Court of Human Rights declared that the moratorium on farmland sales violates Ukrainians’ human rights as Ukrainian farmers — an estimated seven million of them — are not allowed to manage their property freely.
Experts in Ukraine had hoped that this year parliament might vote against extending the ban. The World Bank estimates the moratorium has cost Ukraine’s economy billions of losses in land taxes and investment in agriculture.
And only on Sept. 20, President Petro Poroshenko said during a speech in parliament that the land moratorium was not in line with Ukraine’s European strategy.
“I would like to remind you that the European Court of Human Rights has recognized that the moratorium on the free market circulation of land violates the rights of Ukrainians,” the president said.
However, the president has signed the bill authorizing the annual land moratorium extension for three years in a row.
The land moratorium extension law required a 226-member majority in the Verkhovna Rada in order to pass.
This year, the law prolonging the moratorium was supported by 20 members of parliament from the 21-member Radical Party, by 27 members of parliament from the 38-member Opposition Bloc, by 17 out of the 20 members of the Batkivshchyna faction in parliament, and by 47 of the 81-member People’s Front party faction. Only 59 lawmakers out of the 135-member pro-presidential Bloc of Petro Poroshenko voted for the moratorium’s extension.
The bill on the land moratorium approved by parliament states that the Cabinet of Ministers must submit to parliament a proposal for a new law concerning the circulation of agricultural land no later than March 1.
The lack of a proper mechanism for setting rules for an agricultural land market was stated as the main reason for extending the moratorium.
A coalition of 39 companies and over 1,500 agricultural producers petitioned for the abolition of the land moratorium in 2018.
