Constitutional Court seen making landmark restitution ruling

The Czech Constitutional Court has ruled in what is being described as a landmark decision in the case of two sisters whose parcel of land was confiscated by the communist regime. The court said that compensation for the parcel, which has since been built on and cannot be returned, should be reasonable and adequate. That would appear to shoot down the compensation of 75,000 crowns which has been offered to the sisters according to 1991 prices. The sisters had been claiming compensation of around 3.0 million crowns. The case will now have to be returned to a lower court. While setting a marker for many ongoing restitution cases, the ruling is unlikely to bring higher compensation for cases where meagre payments were already made, experts say.

Author: Chris Johnstone